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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



LIFE IN EARNEST; 
7 



OR, 



CHRISTIAN ACTIVITY AND A&DOUR 



ILLUSTRATED AND COMMENDED. 
</ \\ 

NOT SLOTHFUL IN BUSINESS; 
FERVENT IN SPIRIT; 
SERVING THE LORD. 

Rom. xii. 11. 



REVISED BY THE COMMITTEE OF PUBLICATION. 



V 

PHILADELPHIA: 
AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION, 

NO. 146 CHESTNUT STREET. 



c •"■ 






Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1845, by 
the American Sunday-school Union, in the clerk's office of the 
District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 



NOTE. 

To " live in earnest" is to live with ha- 
bitual reference to the great end of life. 
It is to make the life that now is, with all 
its relations and obligations, not only en- 
tirely subordinate to the life that is to come, 
but directly and in the highest degree con- 
ducive to the glory and happiness of the 
soul in that coming life. It is to seek with 
intense, agonizing effort the glory of God, 
and the bliss of dwelling in his presence 
eternally. 

The motives to Christian activity and 
ardour are presented and enforced in a very 
original and impressive manner, in a volume 
lately published in London, entitled " Life 
in Earnest : Six Lectures on Christian Ac- 
tivity and Ardour, by the Rev. James Ham- 
ilton, National Scotch Church, Regent 
Square," (London.) They were delivered, 
as part of a course of lectures on the epis- 
tle to the Romans, in the autumn of 1844. 
In the preface to the English edition, dated 

3 



4 NOTE. 

Jan. 7, 1845, the author says: — " As all 
my efforts cannot secure that amount of 
pastoral intercourse for which I long, I felt 
desirous of sending to your several homes 
a word in season, at the opening of this 
year ; and as an appropriate remembrance 
at such a time, I have selected the follow- 
ing familiar lectures. You now receive 
them in nearly the same homely guise in 
which you first made their acquaintance a 
few Sabbaths ago." 

The American Sunday-school Union issue 
this first * American edition, (in which the 
substance of the original work is embraced,) 
in the hope that not only Sunday-school 
teachers, (in whose success the society is 
specially interested,) but ministers of the 
gospel and private Christians also, will be 
excited by it to more diligence in business, 
more fervency of spirit, and more cheerful 
and zealous service in the cause of our 
divine Master. 

* At the time of putting this edition in type, the com- 
mittee had no intimation that any other American edi- 
tion was published or contemplated. 



CONTENTS. 

Page 

Chapter I. — Industry 7 

II.— -Industry 25 

IIL— An Eye to the Lord Jesus 45 

IV.— A fervent Spirit 63 

V.— The Threefold Cord 82 

VI. — A word to each and to all — Con- 
clusion 103 



LIFE IN EARNEST. 



CHAPTER I. 

INDUSTRY. 

" Not slothful in business" 

Two things are very certain, — that we have 
all got a work to do, and are all, more or 
less, indisposed to do it. In other words, 
every man has a calling, and most men have 
a greater or less amount of indolence, which 
disinclines them for the work of that calling. 
Many men would have liked the gospel all 
the better, if it had entirely repealed the 
sentence, " In the sweat of thy face shalt 
thou eat thy bread ;" had it proclaimed 
a final emancipation from industry and 
turned our world into a merry play-ground 
or luxurious dormitory. But this is not what 
the gospel does. It does not abolish labour ; 
it gives it a new and a nobler aspect. The 
gospel abolishes labour much in the same way 

7 



8 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

as it abolishes death ; it leaves the thing, but 
changes its nature. The gospel sweetens the 
believer's work : it gives him new motives for 
performing it. The gospel dignifies toil : it 
transforms it from the drudgery of the work- 
house or the penitentiary, to the affectionate 
offices and joyful services of the fire-side and 
the family circle. It asks us to do for the 
sake of Christ many things which we were 
once compelled to bear as a portion of the 
curse, and which worldly men perform for 
selfish and secondary reasons. " Whatsoever 
ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of 
the Lord Jesus. Wives, submit yourselves 
unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the 
Lord. Children, obey your parents in all 
things, for this is well pleasing unto the 
Lord. Servants, obey in all things your 
masters according to the flesh, not with eye- 
service, as men-pleasers, but in singleness of 
heart, fearing God ; and whatsoever ye do, 
do it heartily as to the Lord and not unto 
men, knowing that of the Lord ye shall re- 
ceive the reward of the inheritance, for ye 
serve the Lord Christ." The gospel has not 
superseded diligence. " Study to be quiet 



INDUSTRY. 9 

and to do your own business, and to work 
with your own hands, as we commanded you. 
If any man will not work, neither let him 
eat." It is mentioned as almost the climax 
of sin, " And withal they learn to be idle, 
wandering about from house to house ; and 
not only idle, but tattlers also, and busy- 
bodies, speaking things which they ought 
not :" as, on the other hand, the healthy and 
right-conditioned state of a soul is, " Not sloth- 
ful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the 
Lord." 

I. This precept is violated by those who 
have no business at all. By the bounty of 
God's providence, some are in such a situa- 
tion, that they do not need to toil for a sub- 
sistence ; they go to bed when they please, 
and get up when they can sleep no longer, 
and they do with themselves whatever they 
like ; and though we dare not say that their's 
is the happiest life, it certainly seems to be 
the easiest. But it will neither be a lawful 
life nor a happy one, unless it have some work 
in hand, some end in view. Those of you 
who are familiar with the shore, may have seen, 
attached to the inundated reef, a creature, 



10 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

(whether a plant or animal you could scarcely 
tell,) rooted to the rock as a plant might be, 
and twirling its long tentacula as an animal 
would do. This plant-animal's life is somewhat 
monotonous, for it has nothing to do but 
grow and twirl its feelers, float in the tide, 
or fold itself up on its foot-stalk when that 
tide has receded, for months and years to- 
gether. Now, would it not be very dismal 
to be transformed into a zoophyte ? Would 
it not be an awful punishment, with your 
human soul still in you, to be anchored to a 
rock, able to do nothing but spin about your 
arms or fold them up again, and knowing no 
variety, except when the receding ocean left 
you in the daylight, or the returning waters 
plunged you into the green depths again, or 
the sweeping tide brought you the prize of a 
young periwinkle or an invisible star-fish ? But 
what better is the life you are spontaneously 
leading ? What greater variety marks your 
existence, than chequers the life of the sea- 
anemone ? Does not one day float over you 
after another, just as the tide floats over it, 
and find you much the same, and leave you 
vegetating still ? Are you more useful ? 



INDUSTRY. 1 1 

What real service to others did you render 
yesterday ? What tangible amount of occu- 
pation did you overtake in the 168 hours 
of which last week consisted ? And what 
higher end in living have you than that po- 
lypus ? You go through certain mechanical 
routines of rising, and dressing, and visiting, 
and dining, and going to sleep again ; and 
are a little roused from your usual lethargy 
by the arrival of a friend, or the effort needed 
to write some note of ceremony. But as it 
curtseys in the waves, and vibrates its ex- 
ploring arms, and gorges some dainty me- 
dusa, the sea-anemone goes through nearly 
the same round of pursuits and enjoyments 
with your intelligent and immortal self. Is 
this a life for a rational and responsible crea- 
ture to lead ? 

II. But this precept is also violated by 
those who are diligent in trifles, — whose 
activity is a busy idleness. You may be 
very earnest in a pursuit which is utterly 
beneath your prerogative as an intelligent 
creature,, and your high destination as an 
immortal being. Pursuits which are per- 
ft ctly proper in creatures destitute of reason 



12 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

may be very culpable in those who not only 
have reason, but are capable of enjoyments 
above the range of reason itself. We just 
now imagined a man retaining all his con- 
sciousness transformed into a zoophyte. Let 
us imagine another similar transformation. 
Fancy that instead of a polypus you were 
changed into a swallow. There you have a 
creature abundantly busy, up in the early 
morning, for ever on the wing, as graceful 
and sprightly in his flight as he is tasteful in 
the haunts which he selects. Look at him, 
zigzagging over the clover field, skimming the 
limpid lake, whisking round the steeple, or 
dancing gayly in the sky. Behold him in 
high spirits, shrieking out his ecstasy as he 
has bolted a dragon-fly, or darted through 
the arrow-slits of the old turret, or per- 
formed some other feat of hirundine agility. 
And notice how he pays his morning visits, 
alighting elegantly on some house-top, and 
twittering politely by turns to the swallow 
on either side of him, and after five minutes' 
conversation, off and away to call for his friend 
at the castle. And now he is gone upon his 
travels, gone to spend the winter at Rome or 



INDUSTRY. 13 

Naples, to visit Egypt or the Holy Land, 
or on a pilgrimage to Spain or the coast 
of Barbary. And when he comes home 
next April, sure enough he has been abroad ; 
— charming climate,— highly delighted with 
the cicadas in Italy, and the bees on Hy- 
mettus ; — locusts in Africa rather scarce this 
season ; but upon the whole much pleased 
with his trip, and returned in high health 
and spirits. Now, this is a very proper life 
for a swallow, but is it a life for you ? To 
flit about from house to house; to pay futile 
visits, where, if the talk were written down, 
it would amount to little more than the chat- 
tering of a swallow ; to bestow all your 
thoughts on graceful attitudes and nimble 
movements and polished attire ; to roam 
from land to land with so little information 
in your head, or so little taste for the sublime 
or beautiful in your soul, that could a swallow 
publish his travels, and did you publish 
yours, we should probably find the one a 
counterpart of the other ; the winged tra- 
veller enlarging on the discomforts of his 
nest, and the wingless one, on the miseries 
of his hotel or his chateau ; you describing 
2 



14 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

the places of amusement, or enlarging on 
the vastness of the country, and the abund- 
ance of the game ; and your rival eloquent 
on the self-same things. Oh ! it is a thought, 
not ridiculous, but appalling. If the earthly 
history of some of our fellow-creatures were 
written down ; if a faithful record were kept 
of the way they spend their time ; if all the 
hours of idle vacancy or idler occupancy were 
put together, and the very small amount of 
useful diligence deducted, the life of a bird 
or quadruped would be a nobler one ; more 
worthy of its powers and more equal to 
its Creator's end in forming it. Such a re- 
gister is kept. Though the trifler does not 
chronicle his own vain words and wasted 
hours, they chronicle themselves. They find 
their indelible place in that book of remem- 
brance with which human hands cannot tam- 
per, and from which no erasure, save one, can 
blot them. They are noted in the memory 
of God. And when once this life of wondrous 
opportunities and awful advantages is over — 
when the twenty or fifty years of probation 
are fled away — when mortal existence, with 
its facilities for personal improvement and 



INDUSTRY. 15 

serviceableness to others, is gone beyond re- 
cal — when the trifler looks back to the long 
pilgrimage, with all the doors of hope and 
doors of usefulness, past which he skipped in 
his frisky forgetfulness — what anguish will it 
cause to think that he has gambolled through 
such a world without salvation to himself, 
without any real benefit to his brethren, a 
busy trifler, a vivacious idler, a clever fool ! 

III. Those violate this precept, who have 
a lawful calling, a proper business, but are 
slothful in it. When people are in business 
for themselves, they are in less risk of trans- 
gressing this injunction; though even then 
it sometimes happens that the hand is not 
diligent enough to make its owner rich. But 
it is, when engaged in business, not for our- 
selves, but for others, or for God, that we are 
in greatest danger of neglecting this rule. 
The servant, who has no pleasure in his work, 
who does no more than wages can buy, or a 
legal agreement enforce ; the shopman, who 
does not enter heartily into his employer's 
interest, and bestir himself to extend his 
trade as he would strive were the concern his 
own ; the scholar, who trifles when his 



16 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

teacher's eye is elsewhere, and who is content 
if he can only learn enough to escape dis- 
grace ; the teacher, who is satisfied if he can 
only convey a decent share of instruction, 
and who does not labour for the mental ex- 
pansion and spiritual well-being of his pupils, 
as he would for those of his own children; 
the magistrate or civic functionary, who is 
only careful to escape public censure, and 
who does not labour to make the community 
richer, or happier, or better for his adminis- 
tration ; the minister, who can give his ener- 
gies to another cause than the cause of Christ, 
and neglect his Master's business in minding 
his own; every one, in short, who performs 
the work which God or his brethren have 
given him to do in a hireling and perfunctory 
manner, is a violator of the divine injunction, 
"Not slothful in business." There are some 
persons of a dull and languid turn. They 
trail sluggishly through life, as if some pain- 
ful viscus, some adhesive slime were clogging 
every movement, and making their snail-path 
a waste of their very substance. They do no- 
thing with that healthy alacrity, that gleesome 
energy which bespeaks a sound mind even more 



INDUSTRY. 17 

than a vigorous body; but they drag them- 
selves to the inevitable task with remonstrating 
reluctance, as if every joint were set in a socket 
of torture, or as if they expected the quick flesh 
to cleave to the next implement of industry 
they handled. Having no wholesome love to 
work, no joyous delight in duty, they do every 
thing grudgingly, in the most superficial man- 
ner, and at the latest moment. Others there 
are, who, if you find them at their post, you 
will find them dozing at it. They are a sort 
of perpetual somnambulists, walking through 
their sleep ; moving in a constant mystery ; 
looking for their faculties, and forgetting 
what they are looking for; not able to find 
their work, and when they have found their 
work not able to find their hands ; doing every 
thing dreamily, and therefore every thing con- 
fusedly and incompletely ; their work a dream, 
their sleep a dream, not repose, not refresh- 
ment, but a slumbrous vision of rest, a dreamy 
query concerning sleep ; too late for every 
thing, taking their passage when the ship 
has sailed, insuring their property when the 
house is burned, locking the door when the 
goods are stolen — men, whose bodies seem to 
2* 



18 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

have started in the race of existence before 
their minds were ready, and who are always 
gazing out vacantly as if they expected their 
wits were coming up by the next arrival. 
But, besides the sloths and the somnambulists, 
there is a third class — the day-dreamers. 
These are a very mournful, because a self- 
deceiving generation. Like a man who has 
his windows glazed with yellow glass, and 
who can fancy a golden sunshine, or a mellow 
autumn on the fields even when a wintry sleet 
is sweeping over them, the day-dreamer 
lives in an elysium of his own creating. 
With a foot on either side of the fire — with 
his chin on his bosom, and the wrong end of 
the book turned towards him, he can pursue 
his self-complacent musings till he imagines 
himself a traveller in unknown lands — the 
explorer of central Africa — the solver of all 
the unsolved problems in science — the author 
of some unprecedented poem at which the 
wide world is wondering — or something so 
stupendous that he even begins to quail 
at his own glory. The misery is, that whilst 
nothing is done towards attaining the great- 
ness, his luxurious imagination takes its 



INDUSTRY. 19 

possession for granted, and with his feet on 
the fender, he fancies himself already on 
the highest pinnacle of fame ; and a still 
greater misery is, that the time thus Wasted 
in unprofitable musings, if spent in honest 
application and downright working, would go 
very far to carry him where his sublime 
imagination fain would be. To avoid this 
guilt and wretchedness, 

1. Have a business in which diligence is 
lawful and desirable. There are some pursuits 
which do not deserve to be called a business. 
iEropus was the king of Macedonia, and it 
was his favourite pursuit to make lanterns. Pro- 
bably, he was very good at making them, but 
his proper business was to be a king, and 
therefore the more lanterns he made, the worse 
king he was. And if your work be a high 
calling, you must not dissipate your energies on 
trifles, on things which, though lawful in them- 
selves, are still as irrelevant to you as lantern- 
making is irrelevant to a king. Perhaps 
some are without any specific calling. They 
have neither farms nor merchandise to look 
after. They have no household to care for, 
no children to train and educate, no official 



20 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

duties to engross their time. They have an in- 
dependent fortune, and live at large. I con- 
gratulate them on their wealth, their liberal 
education, their position in society, and their 
abundant leisure. It is in their power to be 
the benefactors of their generation ; they are 
in circumstances to do an eminent service for 
God and finish some great work before their 
going hence. What that work shall be I do 
not attempt to indicate ; I rather leave it for 
their own investigation and discovery. Every 
one has his own line of things. Howard chose 
one path, and Wilberforce another ; Harlan 
Page chose one, and Brainerd Taylor another. 
Mrs. Fletcher did one work, Lady Glenorchy 
another, and Mary Jane Graham a third. 
Every one did the work for which God had 
best fitted them, but each made that work his 
or her business. They gave themselves to it ; 
they not only did it by the bye, but they 
selected it and set themselves in earnest to it, 
not parenthetically, but on very purpose — the 
problem of their lives — for Christ's sake and 
in Christ's service, and held themselves as 
bound to do it as if they had been by himself 
expressly engaged for it. And, you must 



INDUSTRY. 21 

do the same. Those who do not need to 
toil for their daily bread, their very leisure 
is a hint what the Lord would have them to 
do. As you have no business of your own, 
he would have you devote yourselves to his 
business. He would have you carry on, in some 
of its manifold departments, that work which 
he came to earth to do. He would have you 
go about his Father's business as he was wont 
to be about it. And if you still persist in 
living to yourselves, you cannot be happy. 
You cannot spend all your days in nuking pin- 
cushions, or reading newspapers, or loitering in 
club-rooms and coffee houses, and yet be happy. 
If you profess to follow Christ, this is not a 
Christian life. It is not a conscientious, and 
so it cannot be a comfortable life. And if the 
pin-cushion or the newspaper fail to make you 
happy, remember the reason — very good as 
relaxations, ever so great an amount of these 
things can never be a business, and " wist ye 
not that you should be about your Father's 
business ?" 

2. Having made a wise and deliberate 
selection of a business, go on with it, go 
through with it. Persevering mediocrity is 



22 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

much more respectable and unspeakably more 
useful than talented inconstancy. In the 
heathery turf you will often find a plant 
chiefly remarkable for its peculiar roots ; from 
the main stem down to the minutest fibre, you 
will find them all abruptly terminate, as if 
shorn or bitten off; and the silly superstition 
of the country people alleges, that once on 
a time it was a plant of singular potency for 
healing all sorts of maladies, and therefore 
the great enemy of man, in his malignity, bit 
off the rfots in which its virtues resided. 
This plant, with this quaint history, is a very 
good emblem of many well-meaning but 
little-effecting people. The efficacy of every 
good work lies in its completion, and all their 
good works terminate abruptly and are left off 
unfinished. The devil frustrates their efficacy 
by cutting off their ends ; their unprofitable 
history is made up of plans and projects, 
schemes of usefulness that were never gone 
about, and magnificent undertakings that were 
never carried forward ; societies that were 
set a-going, then left to shift for themselves, 
and forlorn beings who for a time were taken 
up and instructed, and just when they were 



INDUSTRY. 23 

beginning to show symptoms of improvement, 
were cast on the world again. But others 
there are, who, before beginning to build, 
count the cost, and having collected their ma- 
terials and laid their foundations deep and 
broad, go on to rear their structure, indiffer- 
ent to more tempting schemes and sublimer 
enterprises afterwards suggested. The man 
who provides a home for a poor neighbour, 
is a greater benefactor of the poor than he 
who lays the foundation of a stately alms- 
house and never finishes a single apartment. 
The persevering teacher who guides one 
child into the saving knowledge of Christ, and 
leads him on to established habits of piety, is a 
more useful man than his friend, who gathers 
in a room-full of ragged children, and after 
a few weeks of waning zeal, turns them all 
adrift in the streets again. The patriot who 
set his heart on abolishing the slave-trade, and 
after twenty years of rebuffs and revilings, of 
tantalized hope and disappointed effort, at last 
succeeded, achieved a greater work than if he 
had set afloat all possible schemes of philan- 
thropy, and then left them, one after the 
other, to sink or swim. So short is life that 



24 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

we can afford to lose none of it in abortive 
undertakings ; and when once we are assured 
that a given work is one which it is worth our 
while to do, it is true wisdom to set about it 
instantly, and when once we have begun it, it 
is true economy to finish it. 



CHAPTER II. 



INDUSTRY. 



" Not slothful in business." 

We have shown how this precept is vio- 
lated by various descriptions of persons ; by 
those who have no business at all, and those 
whose business is only an active idleness ; 
and finally, by those who, having a lawful 
business— a good and honourable work as- 
signed them, do it reluctantly or drowsily, or 
leave it altogether undone. 

There are some who have no business, 
and are of no use in the world. They are 
doing no good and attempting none ; and 
when they are taken out of the world, their 
removal creates no vacancy. When an oak, 
or any noble and useful tree is uprooted, its 
removal creates a blank. For years after, 
when you look to the place which once knew 
3 25 



26 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

it, you see that something is missing. The 
branches of adjacent trees have not yet sup- 
plied the void. They still hesitate to occupy 
the place formerly filled by their powerful 
neighbour ; and there is still a deep chasm in 
the ground — a rugged pit which shows how 
far the giant-roots once spread. But when a 
leafless pole — a wooden pin is plucked up, 
it comes easy and clean away. There is no 
rending of the turf, no marring of the land- 
scape, no vacuity created, no regret. It leaves 
no memento, and is never missed. Now, 
which are you ? Are you cedars, planted 
in the house of the Lord, casting a cool and 
grateful shadow on those around you ? Are 
you palm-trees, rich and flourishing, yield- 
ing bounteous fruit, and making all who 
know you bless you ? Are you so useful, 
that were you once away, it would not be easy 
to fill your place again ; but people, as they 
pointed to the void in the plantation — the pit 
in the ground, would say, " It was here that 
that brave cedar grew : it was here that that 
old palm-tree diffused his familiar shadow and 
showered his mellow clusters !" Or are you 
a peg — a pin — a rootless, branchless, fruitless 



INDUSTRY. 27 

thing that may be pulled up any day, and 
no one ever care to ask what has become 
of it? What are you doing? What are 
you contributing to the world's happiness, 
or the Church's glory? What is your 
business ? 

Individuals there are who are doing some- 
thing, though it would be difficult to specify 
what. They are busy; but it is a busy 
idleness. 

" Their only labour is to kill the time, 
And labour dire it is, and weary wo. 
They sit, they loll, turn o'er some idle rhyme, 
Or saunter forth, with tottering steps and slow : 
This soon too rude an exercise they find — 
Strait on the couch their limbs again they throw, 
Where hours on hours they sighing lie reclined, 
And court the vapoury god soft-breathing in the 
wind." 

They think that they are busy, though their 
chief business be to get quit of themselves. 
To annihilate time, to quiet conscience, to 
banish care, to keep ennui out at one door 
and serious thoughts out at the other, gives 
them all their occupation. And, betwixt their 
fluttering visits and frivolous engagements, 



28 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

their midnight diversions, their haggard morn- 
ings, and shortened days, their yawning at- 
tempts at reading, and. sulky application to 
matters of business which they cannot well 
evade ; betwixt mobs of callers and shoals of 
ceremonious notes, they fuss and fret them- 
selves into the pleasant belief that they are 
the most worried and hard-driven of mortal 
creatures. Even when groaning in prospect 
of interminable hours, they have not a moment 
to spare ; and a chief employment of their 
leisure is to appear in a constant hurry. 
Could you imbody in matter-of-fact all their 
sham activity and bustling show ; could 
you write down a truthful enumeration of 
the doings of a single week, I fear there 
would not be found one act which, were 
He saying, " Thou fool, this night shall thy 
soul be required of thee," the Judge of all 
would accept as a right deed or rightly 
done. It is possible to be very busy, and 
yet very idle. It is possible to be serious 
about trifles, and to exhaust one's energies in 
doing nothing. It is possible to be toiling all 
one's days in doing that which, in the infa- 
tuation of fashion, or the delirium of ambition, 



INDUSTRY. 29 

will look exceedingly august and important ; 
but which the first flash of eternity will trans- 
mute into shame and everlasting contempt. 

Then, among those who have really got a 
work to do — whose calling is lawful or some- 
thing more— perhaps a direct vocation in the 
service of God — there are three classes who 
violate the precept of the text — those who do 
their work grudgingly, or drowsily, or not at 
all — the sloths, the somnambulists, and the 
day-dreamers. Some do it grudgingly. They 
have not a heart for work ; and of all work, 
least heart for that which God has given them. 
Instead of that angelic alacrity which speeds 
instinctively on the service which God as- 
signs; that healthy love of labour which a 
loyal and well-conditioned soul would exhibit, 
they postpone every thing to the latest mo- 
ment, and then go whimpering and growling 
to the hated task as if they were about to un- 
dergo some dismal punishment. They have 
a strange idea of occupation. They look on 
it as a drug, a penalty, a goblin, a fiend, 
something very fierce and. cruel, something 
very nauseous ; and they would gladly smuggle 
through existence by one of those side-paths 
* 3* 



30 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

which the grim giants, labour and industry, 
do not guard. 

Others again, who do not quite refuse 
their work, put only half a soul into it. 
They have no zeal for their profession. 
They somehow scramble through it ; but 
it is without any noble enthusiasm — any ap- 
petite for work or any love to the God who 
gives it. If they are intrusted with the pro- 
perty of others, they cannot boast as Jacob 
did : " In the day the drought consumed me, 
and the frost by night; and my sleep de- 
parted from mine eyes. God hath seen mine 
affliction and the labour of my hands." If 
intrusted with the souls of others, they can- 
not reckon up " the abundant labours, the 
often journeyings, the weariness and painful- 
ness, the watchings, the hunger and thirst," 
the perils and privations which, for the love 
of his Master and his Master's work, the 
apostle of the Gentiles joyfully encountered. 
If scholars, they are content to learn the les- 
son, so that no fault shall be found. If at 
service, they aspire to nothing more than 
fulfilling their inevitable toils. And if occu- 
pying official stations, they are satisfied with. 



INDUSTRY. 31 

a decent discharge of customary duties, and 
are glad if they leave things no worse than 
they found them. They are hirelings ; 
heartless in all they do. Their work is 
so sleepily done that it is enough to make 
you lethargic to labour in their company ; 
.and, before they go zealously and wakefully 
to work, they would need to be startled 
up into the day-light of actual existence — 
they would need to be shaken from that 
torpor into which the very sight of labour is 
apt to entrance them. Oh, happier far, to 
lose health and life itself in clear, brisk, con- 
scious working ; to spend the last atom of 
strength, and yield the vital spark itself in 
joyful, wakeful efforts for Him who did all for 
us — than to drawl through a dreaming life, 
with all the fatigue of labour and nothing of 
its sweetness ; snoring in a constant lethargy ; 
sleeping while you work, and night-mared 
with labour when you really sleep. 

And, besides the procrastinating class, 
those are "slothful in business" who do 
no business at all. And there are such 
persons — agreeable, self-complacent, plausible 
persons — who really fancy that they have 



32 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

done a great deal because they have intended 
to do so much. Their life is made up of 
good purposes, splendid projects, and heroic 
resolutions. They live in the region which 
the poet has described: — 

"A pleasing land of drowsy-head it was, 
Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye, 
And of gay castles in the clouds that pass, 
For ever flushing round a summer's sky." 

They have performed so many journeys, and 
made so many discoveries, and won so many 
laurels in this aerial clime, that life is over, 
and they find their real work is not begun. 
Like the dreamer who is getting great sums of 
money in. his sleep, and who, when he awakes, 
opens his till or his pocket-book almost ex- 
pecting to find it full, the day-dreamer, the 
projector, awaking up at the close of life, can 
hardly believe that after his distinct and 
glorious visions, he is leaving the world no 
wiser, mankind no richer, and his own home 
no happier for all the golden prospects which 
have flitted through his busy brain. What a 
blessed world it were, how happy and how 
rich, if all the idlers were working, if all the 



INDUSTRY. 33 

workers were awake, and if all the projectors 
were practical men ! 

I trust, my readers, that many among you 
are desirous to be active Christians. Perhaps 
the following hints may be helpful to those 
who wish to serve the Lord by diligence in 
business. 

1. Have a calling in which it is worth 
while to be busy. There are many callings 
in which it is lawful for the Christian to 
"abide." He may be a lawyer like Sir 
Matthew Hale, or a physician like Haller, 
Heberden, and Mason Goode. He may be 
a painter like West, or a sculptor like Bacon, 
or a poet like Milton and Klopstock and 
Cowper. He may be a trader like Thornton 
and the Hardcastles, or a philosopher like 
Boyle and Boerhaave. He may be a hard- 
working artisan like the Yorkshire Black- 
smith and the Watchmaker of Geneva ; or 
he may toil for his daily bread like the Happy 
Waterman, and the Wallsend Miner, and the 
Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, and many a do- 
mestic servant of humble but pious memory.. 
And the business of this ordinary calling, the 



34 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

disciple of Christ must discharge heartily, 
and with all his might. He must labour to be 
eminent and exemplary in his own profession. 
He should seek, for the sake of the gospel, 
to be first-rate in his own department. But 
over and above his ordinary calling as a 
member of society, the believer has his 
special calling as a member of the church. 
He has a direct work to do in his Saviour's 
service. Some have so much of their 
time at their own disposal, that they might 
almost make their calling as members of 
Christ's church the business of their lives. 
And each who is in this privileged situ- 
ation should consider what is the parti- 
cular line of things for which his taste 
and talents most urgently predispose him, 
and for which his training and station best 
adapt him. The healthiest condition of 
the church is where there is a member for 
every office, and where every member fulfils 
his own office,* where there are no defects 
and no transpositions, but each is allowed to 

* Rom. xii. 3—8. 



INDUSTRY. 35 

ply to the utmost the work for which God has 
intended him ; where Newton writes his 
letters, and Butler his Analogy ; where, in the 
leisure of the olden ministry, Matthew Henry 
compiles his Commentary, and where, in the 
calm retreat of Olney, Cowper pours forth his 
devotional melodies ; where Venn cultivates 
his corner of the vineyard, and Whitefield 
ranges over the field of the world ; where 
President Edwards is locked up in his study, 
and Wilberforce is detained in the parlour; 
where the adventurous Carey goes down into 
the pit, and the sturdy arm of Fuller deals 
out the rope ; where he who ministers, waits 
on his ministering, and he that teacheth on 
teaching, and he that exhorteth on exhor- 
tation, and he who hath to give gives libe- 
rally, and he who has method and good 
management rules diligently, and he who can 
pay visits of mercy pays them cheerfully. And 
if the Lord has given you an abundance of 
unoccupied leisure, he has along with it given 
you some talent or other, and says, " Occupy 
till I come." Find out what it is that you 
best can do, or what it is which, if you neglect 
it, is likely to be left undone. And whether 



36 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

you select as your sphere of Christian useful- 
ness, a Sabbath class or a ragged school, 
a local prayer-meeting, or a district for 
domiciliary visitation; whether you devote 
yourself to the interests of some evange- 
listic society, or labour secretly from house to 
house, whatever line of things you select, 
make it your "business." Pursue it so 
earnestly, that though it were only in that one 
field of activity you would evince yourself no 
common Christian. 

2. Make the most of time. Some have 
little leisure, but there are sundry expedients, 
any one of which, if fairly tried, would make 
that little leisure longer. (I.) Economy. 
Most of the men who have died enormously 
rich, acquired their wealth, not in huge wind- 
falls, but by minute and careful accumulations. 
It was not one vast sum bequeathed to them 
after another, which overwhelmed them with 
inevitable opulence ; but it was the loose 
money which most men would lavish away ; 
the little sums which many would not deem 
worth looking after; the pennies and six- 
pences of which you would keep no reckon- 
ing, these are the items which, year by year 



INDUSTRY. 37 

piled up, have reared their pyramid of for- 
tune. From these money-makers let us learn 
the nobler "avarice of time." One of the 
longest and most elaborate poems of recent 
times* was composed in the streets of Lon- 
don by a physician in busy practice during 
the brief snatches of time, when passing 
from one patient's door to another. And 
in order to achieve some good work 
which you have much at heart, you may 
not be able to secure an entire week, or 
even an uninterrupted day. But try w T hat 
you can make of the broken fragments of 
time. Glean up its golden dust; those fil- 
ings and parings of precious duration, those 
leavings of days and remnants of hours which 
so many sweep out into the waste of existence. 
Perhaps, if you be a miser of moments, if you 

* Good's Translation of Lucretius. A similar instance 
of literary industry is recorded of Dr. Burney, the mu- 
sician. With the help of pocket grammars and dic- 
tionaries, which he had taken the trouble to write out 
for his own use, he acquired the French and Italian 
languages when riding on horseback from place to 
place to give his professional instructions. 

4 



38 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

be frugal and hoard up odd minutes and half- 
hours and unexpected holidays, your care- 
ful gleanings may eke out a long and useful 
life, and you may die at last richer in exist- 
ence than multitudes whose time is all their 
own. The time which some men waste in 
superfluous slumber and idle visits and de- 
sultory application, were it all redeemed, 
would give them wealth of leisure, and en- 
able them to execute undertakings for which 
they deem a less worried life than their's es- 
sential. When a person says, u I have no time 
to pray, no time to read the Bible, no time to 
improve my mind nor do a kind turn to a 
neighbour," he may be saying what he thinks, 
but he should not think what he says ; for if 
he has not got the time already, he may get 
it by redeeming it. (2.) Punctuality. A sin- 
gular mischance has occurred to some of our 
friends. At the instant when he ushered them 
on existence, God gave them a work to do, 
and he also gave them a competency of time, 
so much time, that if they began at the right 
moment, and wrought with sufficient vigour, 
their time and their work would end together. 



INDUSTRY. 39 

But a good many years ago a strange mis- 
fortune befel them. A fragment of their 
allotted time was lost. They cannot tell 
what became of it; but sure enough it has 
dropped out of existence ; for just like two 
measuring-lines laid alongside, the one an 
inch shorter than the other, their work and 
their time run parallel, but the work is 
always ten minutes in advance of the time. 
They are not irregular. They are never 
too soon. Their letters are posted the very 
minute after the mail is shut ; they arrive 
at the wharf just in time to see the steam- 
boat off; they come in sight of the depot 
precisely when the train starts. They do 
not break any engagement nor neglect any 
duty ; but they systematical^ go about it 
too late, and usually too late by about the 
same fatal interval. How can they retrieve 
the lost fragment, so essential to character 
and comfort ? Perhaps by a device like 
this : suppose that on some auspicious morn- 
ing they contrived to rise a quarter of an 
hour before their usual time, and were ready 
for their morning worship fifteen minutes 
sooner than they have been for the last ten 



40 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

years ; or, what will equally answer the end, 
suppose that for once they merged their morn- 
ing meal altogether, and went straight out to 
the engagements of the day ; suppose that 
they arrived at the class-room, or the work- 
shop, or the place of business, fifteen minutes 
before their usual time, or that they forced 
themselves to the appointed rendezvous on the 
week-day, or to the sanctuary on the Sabbath- 
day, a quarter of an hour before their in- 
stinctive time of going — all would yet be well. 
This system carried out would bring the 
world and themselves to synchronize ; they 
and the marching hours would come to keep 
step again, and moving on in harmony, they 
would escape the jolting fatigue and awkward- 
ness they used to feel, when old Father Time 
put the right foot foremost and they advanced 
the left : their reputation would be retrieved, 
and friends, who at present fret, would begin to 
smile ; their fortunes would be made ; their 
satisfaction in their work would be doubled ; and 
their influence over others and their power for 
usefulness w T ould be unspeakably augmented. 
(3.) Method. A man has got twenty or 
thirty letters and packets to carry to their 



INDUSTRY. 41 

several destinations ; but instead of arrang- 
ing them beforehand, and putting all ad- 
dressed to the same locality in a separate 
parcel, he crams the whole into his promis- 
cuous bag, and trudges off to the west, 
for he knows that he has got a letter directed 
thither ; that letter he delivers, and hies 
away to the east, when lo ! the same hand- 
ful which brings out the invoice for Mer- 
chant's Bow contains a brief for the Court 
House, and a petition, which should have 
been left, had he noticed it earlier, at the 
Capitol. Accordingly he retraces his steps 
and repairs the omission, and then performs 
a transit from the north to the south ; till 
in two days he overtakes the work of one, 
and travels fifty miles to accomplish as much 
as a man of method would have managed 
in fifteen. The man who has thoroughly 
mastered that lesson, "A place for every 
thing, and every thing in its place," will 
save a world of time. He loses no leisure 
seeking for the unanswered letter or the lost 
receipt ; he does not need to travel the same 
road twice ; and hence it is that some of the 
busiest men have the least of a busy look. 
4* 



42 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

Instead of slamming doors and ringing alarm- 
bells, and knocking over chairs and children 
in their headlong hurry, they move about 
deliberately, for they have made their calcula- 
tions, and know what time they can count upon. 
And just as a prodigal of large fortune is 
obliged to do shabby things, whilst an orderly 
man of moderate income has always an easy 
look, as if there were still something left in 
his pocket — as he can afford to pay for goods 
when he buys them, and to put something 
into the collecting-box when it passes him, 
and after he has discharged all his debts has 
still something to spare — so is it with the 
methodical husbanders and the disorderly 
spendthrifts of time. Those who live with- 
out a plan have never any leisure, for their 
work is never done : those who lime their 
engagements and arrange their work be- 
forehand, can bear an occasional interrup- 
tion. They can reserve an evening hour 
for their families ; they can sometimes take a 
walk into the country, or drop in to see a 
friend ; they can now and then contrive to 
read a useful book ; and amidst all their im- 
portant avocations, they have a tranquil and 



INDUSTRY. 43 

opulent appearance, as if they still had plenty 
of time. (4.) Promptitude. Every scene 
of occupation is haunted by that "thief of 
time," procrastination; and all his ingenuity 
is directed to steal that best of opportunities, 
the present time. The disease of humanity, 
(disinclination to the work God has given,) 
more frequently takes the form of dilatoriness 
than a downright and decided refusal. But 
delay shortens life and abridges industry, just 
as promptitude enlarges both. You have a 
certain amount of work before you, and in all 
likelihood some unexpected engagements may 
be superadded as the time wears on. You 
may begin that work immediately, or you 
may postpone it till the evening, or till the 
week is closing, or till near the close of 
life. Your sense of duty insists on its being 
done; but procrastination says, "It will be 
pleasanter to do it by-and-by." What in- 
fatuation ! To end each day in a hurry, and 
life itself in a panic ! And when the flurried 
evening has closed, and the fevered life is 
over, to leave half your work undone ! What- 
ever the business be, do it instantly, if you 
would do it easily. Life will be long enough 



44 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

for the work assigned if you be prompt enough. 
Clear off arrears of neglected duty ; and once 
the disheartening accumulations of the past 
are overtaken, let not that mountain of diffi- 
culty rise again. Prefer duty to diversion, 
and cultivate that athletic frame of soul 
which rejoices in abundant occupation; and 
you will soon find the sweetness of that 
repose which follows finished work, and the 
zest of that recreation in which no delinquent 
feeling mingles, and on which no neglected 
duty frowns. 



CHAPTER III. 

AN EYE TO THE LORD JESUS. 



" Serving the Lord" 

" Serving the Lord." The title which James 
and Jude take to themselves at the outset of 
their Epistles is " James — Jude — a servant of 
Jesus Christ." The original is more forcible 
still. In the inscriptions of these Epistles, as 
well as in this passage, a true and emphatic 
rendering would be," a slave of Jesus Christ;" 
" Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, the 
Lord's bondmen" The believer is the happy 
captive of Jesus Christ; he has fastened on 
himself Immanuel's easy yoke, the light bur- 
den and delicious chains of a Saviour's love ; 
and though Christ says, " Henceforth I call 
you no more servants," the disciple cannot 
give up the designation. There is no other 
term by which, at times, he can express that 

45 



46 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

feeling of intense devoteclness and self-sur- 
render which fills his loyal bosom. " Truly, O 
Lord, I am thy servant, and the son of thine 
handmaid." And far from feeling any igno- 
miny in the appellation, there are times when 
no name of Jesus sounds sweeter in his ear, 
than " Jesus, my Lord ! Jesus, my Master !" 
and when no designation more accords with 
his feeling of entire devotedness, than James, 
a servant, Jude, a slave of Jesus Christ, 
David, a bondsman of the Lord. There are 
times when the believer has such adoring 
views of his Saviour's excellency, and such 
affecting views of his Saviour's claims, that 
rather than refuse one requirement, he only 
grudges that the yoke is so easy that he can 
scarce perceive it, the burden so light that he 
can scarcely recognise himself as a servant. 
He would like something which would iden- 
tify him more closely with his beloved Saviour, 
some open badge that he might carry, and 
which would say for him, 

" I'm not ashamed to own my Lord." 

If Christ would bore his ear to the door-post 
— if Christ would only give him out of his 



AN EYE TO THE LORD JESUS. 47 

own hand his daily task to do — he would like 
it well ; and ceasing to be the servant of men, 
he would fain become the servant of Jesus 
Christ. 

And going to the Saviour in this ardent 
mood of mind, and saying, " Lord, what 
wouldst thou have me to do ?" the Saviour 
hands you back the Bible. He accepts you 
for his servant, and he directs you what ser- 
vice he would have you to perform. The 
Book which he gives you is as really the di- 
rectory of Christ's servants, as is the sealed 
paper of instructions which the commander of 
an expedition takes with him when he goes to 
sea, or the letter of directions which the absent 
nobleman sends to the steward on his estates 
or to the servant in his house. The only dif- 
ference is, its generality. Instead of making 
out a separate copy for your specific use, in- 
dicating the different things which he would 
have you do from day to day, and sending it 
direct to yourself, authenticated by his own 
autograph, and by the precision and indi- 
viduality of its details evidently designed for 
yourself exclusively ; the volume of his will 
is of a wider aspect and more miscellaneous 



48 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

character. It effectually anticipates each step 
of your individual history, and prescribes each 
act of your personal duty ; but intermingling 
these with matters of promiscuous import, it 
leaves abundant scope for your honesty and 
ingenuity to find out the precise things which 
your Lord would have you to do. Had it 
been otherwise, had there been put into the 
hand of each disciple, the moment he pro- 
fessed his faith in Christ, a sealed paper of 
instructions, containing an enumeration of the 
special services which his Lord would have 
this new disciple to render, prescribing a 
certain number of tasks which he expected 
that disciple to perform, and specifying the 
very wa}r in which he would have them done ; 
in proportion as this directory was precise 
and rigid, so would it cease to be the test of 
fidelity ; so would it abridge the limits with- 
in which an unrestricted loyalty may dis- 
play itself. As it is, the directory is so 
plain that he who runs may read; not so 
plain, however, but that he who stands still 
and ponders will find a great deal which the 
runner could not read* It is so peremptory, 
that no man can call Jesus Lord without 



AN EYE TO THE LORD JESUS. 49 

doing the things which it commands ; but 
withal so general, as to leave many things 
to the candour and cordiality of sound-hearted 
disciples. It is precise enough to indicate the 
tempers and the graces and the good works 
with which the Saviour is w r ell pleased, and 
by which the Father is glorified ; but it no- 
where fixes the exact amount of any one of 
these, short of which Christ will not suffer a 
disciple to stop, or beyond which he does not 
expect a disciple to go. The Bible does not 
deal in maximums and minimums ; it does 
not weigh and measure out, by definite pro- 
portions, the ingredients of regenerate cha- 
racter ; but it specifies what these ingredients 
are, and leaves it to the zeal of each believer 
to add to his faith, not as many, but as much 
of each of these things as he pleases. Firmly 
averring, on the one hand, that without each 
and all of these graces a man cannot belong 
to Christ ; it, on the other hand, omits to 
specify how much of each a man must be 
able to produce before Jesus will say to him, 
" Well done, good and faithful servant ; enter 
thou into the joy of thy Lord." The Bible 
announces those qualities which a man must 
5 



50 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

have, in order to prove him horn from above ; 
hut it does not tell what quantity of each he 
must exhibit, in order to secure the smile of 
his Master, and an abundant entrance into 
his heavenly kingdom. By this definiteness 
on the outward side it leaves no room for 
hypocrisy ; but by this indefiniteness on the 
inner side it leaves large place for the works 
and service of faith and patience, the filial 
enterprise, the affectionate voluntaries and 
free-will offerings, of those who know no limit 
to their labours, except the limit of their love 
to Christ. 

You will observe, that at the time when 
you become a disciple of Christ, your Lord 
and Master takes the whole domain of your 
employments under his own jurisdiction. He 
requires you to consecrate your ordinary call- 
ing to him, and to do, over and above, many 
special things expressly for himself. What- 
soever you do, in word or deed, he desires 
that you should do it in his name ; not work- 
ing like a worldling, and praying like a Chris- 
tian, but both in work and prayer, both in 
things secular and things sacred, setting him- 
self before you, carrying out his rules, and 



AN EYE TO THE LORD JESUS. 51 

seeking to please him. One is your Master, 
even Christ, and he is your Master in every 
thing, the Master of your thoughts, your 
words, your family arrangements, your busi- 
ness transactions, — the Master of your work- 
ing time, as well as of your Sabbath day, — 
the Lord of your shop and counting-room, as 
well as of your closet and your pew, — because 
the Lord of your affections, the proprietor of 
your very self besides. The Christian is one 
who may do many things from secondary 
motives — from the pleasure they afford his 
friends — from the gratification they give to 
his own tastes and predilections — from his 
abstract convictions of what is honest, lovely, 
and of good report; but his main and pre- 
dominant motive, that which is paramount 
over every other, and which, when fully pre- 
sented, is conclusive against every other, is 
affection for his Heavenly Friend. One is his 
Master, even Christ, and the love of Christ 
constraineth him. 

Look now at the advantages of a motive 
like this. See how loyalty to Christ secures 
diligence in business — whether that be busi- 



52 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

ness strictly religious or business more mis- 
cellaneous. 

1. Love to Christ is an abiding motive. It 
is neither a fancy, nor a sentiment, nor an 
evanescent emotion. It is a principle — calm, 
steady, undecaying. It was once a problem 
in mechanics, to find a pendulum which should 
be equally long in all weathers — which should 
make the same number of vibrations in the 
summer's heat and in the winter's cold. They 
have now found it out. By a process of com- 
pensations they make the rod lengthen one 
way as much as it contracts another, so that 
the centre of motion is always the same : the 
pendulum swings the same number of beats 
in a day of January as in a day of June ; and 
the index travels over the dial-plate with the 
same uniformity, whether the heat try to 
lengthen, or the cold to shorten, the propel- 
ling power. Now, the moving power in some 
men's minds is sadly susceptible of surround- 
ing influences. It is not principle, but feel- 
ing, which forms their pendulum rod; and 
according as this very variable material is 
affected, their index creeps or gallops, they 



AN EYE TO THE LORD JESUS. 53 

are swift or slow in the work given them to 
do. But principle is like the compensation- 
rod, which neither lengthens in the languid 
heat, nor shortens in the brisker cold ; but 
does the same work day by day, whether the 
ice-winds whistle, or the simoom glows. Of 
all principles, a high-principled affection to 
the Saviour is the steadiest and most secure. 
Other incentives to action are apt to alter or 
lose their influence altogether. You once 
did many things for the sake of friends whose 
wishes, expressed or understood, were your 
incentive, and whose ready smile was your re- 
compense. But that motive to activity is closed. 
Those friends are now gone where your in- 
dustry cannot enrich them, nor your kindness 
comfort them. Or if they remain, they are no 
longer the same that once they were. The 
magic light has faded from off them. The 
mysterious interest which hovered round them 
has gone up like a mountain mist, and left 
them in their wintery coldness or natural rug- 
gedness ; no longer those whom once you took 
them to be. Or you did many things for fame ; 
and were well requited for a winter's work 
5* 



54 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

when the hosannah of a tumultous assembly, 
or the paean of a newspaper paragraph pro- 
claimed you the hero of the hour. But even 
that sort of satisfaction has passed away, and, 
meager diet as these plaudits always were, you 
stand on the hungry pinnacle, and, like other 
aspirants of the same desert-roaming school,* 
you snuff; but, alas ! the breeze has changed. 
The popular taste, the wind of fashion, has 
entirely veered about ; and, except an occa- 
sional tantalizing whiff from the oasis of a 
receding popularity, the sweet gust of its 
green pastures regales you no more. Or you 
are used to work for money — for literal bank- 
notes and pieces of minted metal. Yes, mere 
money is your motive. And you will sit 
up till midnight, or rise in the drowsy morn- 
ing, to get one piece more. Do you not 
feel as if your money-safe were the metro- 
polis of your affections ? Where your mo- 
ney is, is not your heart there also ? Were 
your fortune to clap its wings and fly away, 
would not you feel as if your happiness had 
fled away ? Have not your very thoughts 

* Jer. xiv. 6. 



AN EYE TO THE LORD JESUS. 55 

got a golden tinge ? And tracing some of 
this Sabbath's meditations back to their 
source, would not you soon land in the till, 
the exchange, the counting-room? Is not 
gold your chiefest joy ? But have not flashes 
of truth from time to time dismayed you ? 
" What am I living for ? For a make-believe 
like this ? For a glittering cheat which (in 
the way that I am using it) will be forgotten 
in heaven or felt like a canker in hell ? Flow 
shall I wake up my demented self from this 
spell-dream, and seek some surer bliss, some 
more enduring joy ? For grant that I shall 
be buried in a coffin of gold, and comme- 
morated in a diamond shrine, what the hap- 
pier will it make the me that then shall be ?',* 
And even without these brighter convictions-, 
without these momentary breaks in the ge- 
neral delirium of covetousness, do you not 
feel a duller dissatisfaction occasionally creep- 
ing over you and paralyzing your busy efforts ?' 
" Well — is this right ? This headlong hunt 
of fortune — is it the end for which my Creator 
sent me into the world ? Is it the highest 
end for which my immortal self can live? 
Is it the best way of bestowing that single 



56 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

sojourn in this probation-world, which God 
has given me ? And what am I the better ? 
Am I sure that I myself am the happier 
for it ? Dare I flatter myself that in be- 
queathing so much money, I bequeath to 
my children a sure and certain good — an 
inevitable blessing?" And such intrusive 
thoughts, whose shadows at least flit across 
most serious minds, are very dampening to 
effort — very deadening to diligence in busi- 
ness. Merely serving your friends, in the 
pursuit of fame, merely seeking a fortune, 
you are in constant danger of having all 
motive annihilated, and so all effort para- 
lyzed. But whatever be the business in 
hand, from the veriest trifle up to the sub- 
limest enterprise ; from binding a shoe-latchet 
to preparing a highway for the Lord ; if 
only you be conscious that this is the work 
which He gave you to do, you can go on 
with a cheerful serenity and strenuous satis- 
faction ; for you will never want a motive. 
And it is just when other motives are re- 
laxing into languor, that the compensation we 
speak of comes into play ; and the constrain- 
ing love of Christ restores the soul and keeps 



AN EYE TO THE LORD JESUS. • 57 

its rate of activity quick and constant as ever. 
The love of Christ is an abiding motive, and 
can only lose its power where reason has lost 
its place. No man ever set the Lord before 
him and made it his supreme concern to 
please his Master in heaven, and yet lived to 
say, " What a fool am I ! What a wasted life is 
mine ! What vanity and vexation has Christ's 
service been ! Had I only my career to begin 
anew, I would seek another master and a 
higher end." The Lord Jesus ever lives, 
and never changes ; and therefore the be- 
liever's love to his Saviour never dies. Grow- 
ing acquaintance may bring out new aspects 
of his character ; but it will never disclose a 
reason why the believing soul should love 
him less than it loved at first. Growing 
acquaintance will only divulge new reasons 
for exclaiming, " Worthy is the Lamb !" 
and fresh motives for living not unto our- 
selves, but unto him that loved us and gave 
himself for us. 

2. Love to Christ is a motive equal to all 
emergencies. There is a ruling passion in 
every mind : and when every other consider- 



58 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

ation has lost its power, this ruling passion re- 
tains its influence. Deeper than the love of 
home, deeper than the love of kindred, deeper 
than the love of rest and recreation, deeper 
than the love of life, is the love of Jesus. When 
they were probing among his shattered ribs 
for the fatal bullet, the French veteran ex- 
claimed, " A little deeper, and you will find 
the emperor." The deepest affection in a be- 
lieving soul is the love of its Saviour. And so, 
when other spells have lost their magic, when 
no name of old endearment, no voice of on- 
waiting tenderness, can disperse the lethargy 
of dissolution, the name that is above every 
name, pronounced by one who knows it, will 
kindle its last animation in the eye of death. 
And when other persuasives have lost their 
power ; when other loves no longer constrain 
the Christian ; when the love of country no 
longer constrains his patriotism, nor the love 
of his brethren his philanthropy, nor the love 
of home his fatherly affection, the love of 
Christ will still constrain his loyalty. There 
is a love to Jesus which nothing can de- 
stroy. There is a loyal-he arte dn ess which 



AN EYE TO THE LORD JESUS. 59 

refuses to let a much-loved Saviour go, even 
when the palsied arm of affection is no longer 
conscious of the benignant form it embraces. 
There is a love which, amidst the old and 
weary " feel" of waning years, renews its 
youth, and amidst outward misery and in- 
ward desolation preserves its immortal root; 
which, even when the glassy eye of hunger 
has forgot to sparkle, and the joy at the 
heart can no longer mantle on the withered 
cheek, still holds on, faithful to Jesus, though 
the flesh be faint. This was the love which 
made Paul and Silas, fatigued and famished 
as they were, and sleepless with pain, sing 
praise so loud that their fellow-prisoners 
heard and wondered. This was the love 
which burned in the Apostle's breast, even 
when buffeting the Adriatic's wintry waves, 
and made the work which at Rome awaited 
him, beam like a star of hope through the 
drowning darkness of that dismal night. This 
was the love which thawed his pen, when the 
moan of wintry winds made him mis$ the 
cloak he left at Troas, and impelled him to 
write to Timothy a testamentary entreaty to 
"hold fast" the truths which were hastening 



60 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

himself to martyrdom. Devotedness to Christ 
is a principle which never dies, and neither 
does the diligence which springs from it. 

If you love the Lord Jesus, you have 
every thing. Union to Jesus is salvation. 
Love to Jesus is religion. Love to the 
Lord Jesus is essential and vital Christi- 
anity. It is the mainspring of the life of 
God in the soul of man. It is the all-inclu- 
sive germ, which involves within it every 
other grace. It is the pervasive spirit, with- 
out which the most correct demeanour is but 
dead works, and the seemliest exertions are 
an elegant futility. Love to Christ is the 
best incentive to action — the best antidote to 
idolatry. It adorns the labours which it ani- 
mates, and hallows the friendships which it 
overshadows. It is the smell of the ivory ward- 
robe — the precious perfume of the believer's 
character — the fragrant mystery which only 
lingers round those souls that have been 
to a better clime. Its operation is most mar- 
vellous ; for when there is enough of it, it 
makes the timid bold, and the slothful dili- 
gent. It puts eloquence into the stammering 
tongue, and energy into the withered arm, 



AN EYE TO THE LORD JESUS. 61 

and ingenuity into the dull lethargic brain. 
It takes possession of the soul, and a joyous 
lustre beams in languid eyes, and wings of 
new obedience sprout from lazy, leaden feet. 
Love to Christ is the soul's true heroism, 
which courts gigantic feats, which selects the 
heaviest loads and the hardest toils, which 
glories in tribulations, and hugs reproaches, 
and smiles at death till the king of terrors 
smiles again. It is the aliment which 
feeds assurance — the opiate which lulls sus- 
picions — the oblivious draught which scat- 
ters misery and remembers poverty no more. 
Love to Jesus is the beauty of the believing 
soul ; it is the elasticity of the willing steps, 
and the brightness of the glowing counte- 
nance. If you would be a happy, a holy, 
and a useful Christian, you must be an emi- 
nently Christ-loving disciple. If you have no 
love to Jesus at all, then you are none of his. 
But if you have a little love — ever so little — 
a little drop, almost frozen in the coldness of 
your icy heart — oh ! seek more. Look to 
Jesus, and cry for the Spirit till you find your 
love increasing ; till you find it drowning be- 
setting sins ; till you find it drowning guilty 
6 



62 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

fears — rising, till it touch that index, and 
open your closed lips — rising, till every nook 
and cranny of the soul is filled with it, and all 
the actions of life and relations of earth are 
pervaded by it — rising, till it swell up to the 
brim, and, like the Apostle's love, rush over 
in a full assurance — " Yes, I am persuaded, 
that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor 
principalities, nor powers, nor things present, 
nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor 
any other creature, shall be able to separate 
us from the love of God, which is in Christ 
Jesus our Lord." 



CHAPTER IV. 

A FERVENT SPIRIT. 



"Fervent in Spirit" 

The description of work which a man per- 
forms will depend very much on the master 
whom he serves ; but the amount and quality 
of that work will depend as much on the 
mood of mind in which he does it. The 
master may be good, and the things which 
he commands may be good; but unless the 
servant have an eager willing mind, little 
work may be done, and that little may not be 
well done. This is the glory of the gospel. 
It not only invites you to be the disciples of a 
Saviour, whose requirements are as worthy 
of your most strenuous obedience as he him- 
self is worthy of your warmest love ; but it 
undertakes to give you the energy and enter- 
prise which the service of such a master 

63 



64 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

demands. Besides assigning a good and 
honourable work for your tk business," and him 
whom principalities and powers adore for 
your master, the gospel offers you the zealous 
mind which such a work requires, and which 
such a master loves. 

But what is a fervent spirit ? 

1. It is a believing spirit. Few men have 
faith. There are few to whom the word of 
God is solid ; to whom "the things hoped for" 
are substantial, or "the things unseen" evi- 
dent. There are few who regard the Lord 
Jesus as living now, or as taking a real and 
affectionate charge of his people here on earth. 
There are few who yet expect to see him, 
and who are laying their account with stand- 
ing before his great white throne. But the 
believer has got an open eye. He has looked 
within the veil. He knows that the things 
seen are temporal, and the things unseen are 
eternal. He knows that the Lord Jesus lives, 
and that though unseen he is ever near. He 
may often forget, but he never doubts his 
promise: "Lo! I am with you always." 
This assurance of his ascending Saviour, 
every time he recals it, infuses alacrity, ani- 



A FERVENT SPIRIT. 65 

mation, earnestness. The faith of this is 
fervour. "Yes, blessed Saviour ! art thou 
present now? And seest thou thy disciple 
trifling thus ? Is the Book of Remembrance 
filling up, and are these idle words and 
wasted hours to be registered there? And 
art thou coming quickly and bringing thy 
reward, to give each servant as his work 
shall be? And is this my 'work?' Lord, 
help mine unbelief. Dispel my drowsiness. 
Supplant my sloth, and perfect thy strength 
in me." 

2. A fervent spirit is an affectionate spirit. 
It is one which cries Abba, Father. It is full 
of confidence and love. Peter had a fervent 
spirit, but it would be hard to say whether 
most of his fervour flowed through the outlet 
of adoration or activity. You remember with 
what a burst of praise his first epistle begins, 
and how soon he passes on to practical mat- 
ters. " Blessed be the God and Father of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, which according to. his 
abundant mercy, hath begotten us again unto 
a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus 
Christ from the dead, to an inheritance in- 
corruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth 
6* 



66 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

not away." " Wherefore, laying aside all 
malice, and all guile and hypocrisies, and all 
evil speakings, as new-born babes, desire the 
sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow 
thereby." "Likewise, ye wives, be in sub- 
jection to your own husbands." " The elders 
which are among you I exhort, who am also 
an elder." And as in his epistle, so in his 
living character. His full heart put force and 
promptitude into every movement. Is his 
master encompassed by fierce ruffians? Peter's 
ardour flashes in his ready sword, and converts 
the Galilean boatman into the soldier instan- 
taneous. Is there a rumour of a resurrection 
from Joseph's tomb ? John's nimbler foot dis- 
tances his older friend, but Peter's eagerness 
outruns the serener love of John, and, past the 
gazing disciple, he bolts breathless into the 
vacant sepulchre. Is the risen Saviour on the 
strand ? His comrades secure the net, and 
turn the vessel's head for shore ; but Peter 
plunges over the vessel's side, and, struggling 
through the waves, in his dripping coat falls 
down at his Master's feet. Does Jesus say, 
" Bring of the fish ye have caught ?" Ere any 
one could anticipate the word, Peter's brawny 



A FERVENT SPIRIT. 67 

arm is lugging the weltering net with its 
glittering spoil ashore ; and every eager 
movement is answering beforehand the ques- 
tion of his Lord, " Simon, lovest thou me!" 
And that fervour is the best, which, like Peter's, 
and as occasion requires, can ascend in ecstatic 
ascriptions of adoration and praise, or follow 
Christ to prison and to death ; which can con- 
centrate itself on feats of heroic devotion, or 
distribute itself in the affectionate assiduities 
of a miscellaneous industry. 

3. A fervent spirit is a healthy spirit. 
When a strong spring gushes up in a stag- 
nant pool, it makes some commotion at the 
first ; and looking at the murky stream with 
its flotilla of duckweed tumbling down the 
declivity, and the expatriated newts and horse- 
leeches crawling through the grass ; and in- 
haling the miasma from the inky runnel, you 
may question whether the irruption of this 
powerful current has made matters any better. 
But come anon, when the living water has 
floated out the stagnant elements, and when, 
instead of mephitic mud, skinned over with a 
film of treacherous verdure, the bright foun- 
tain gladdens its mirrored edge with its 



DO LIFE IN EARNEST. 

leaping fulness, then trips away on its merry 
path, the benefactor of thirsty beasts and 
parched fields. So the first manifestations of 
the new and the spiritual element in a carnal 
mind are of a mingled sort. The pellicle of 
decency, the floating duckweed of surface- 
seemliness, which once spread over the cha- 
racter, is broken up ; and accomplishments 
and amusing qualities, which made the man 
very companionable and agreeable, have, for 
the present, disappeared. There is a great 
breakup ; and it is the passing away of the 
old things which is at first more conspicuous 
and less pleasing than the appearance of the 
new. In these earlier stages of regenerate 
history, the contrition and self-reproach of 
the penitent often assume the form of an 
artificial demureness and voluntary humility ; 
and in the general disturbance of those ele- 
ments which have long lain in their specious 
stagnation, defects of character, formerly 
hidden, are perceived sooner than the beau- 
ties of a holiness scarce yet developed. But 
" Spring up, O well ! sing ye unto it." If 
this incursive process go freely on — if the 
living water spring up fast enough to clear 



A FERVENT SPIRIT. OU 

out the sedimentary selfishness of the natural 
mind, with its reptile inmates — if the in- 
flowings of heavenly life be copious enough 
to impart a truly " fervent spirit" — come 
again. Survey that character when the love 
of God has become its second nature. In 
place of the mean and sordid motives which 
once fermented there, view the simplicity 
and godly sincerity — the light-welcoming 
transparency, which reflects the Sun of 
Righteousness above it, and the forms of 
truth around it ; and instead of the fast- 
evaporating scantiness of its former selfish- 
ness, follow its track of diffusive freshness 
through the green pastures which it glad- 
dens, and beneath those branches which 
gratefully sing over it. Like a sweet foun- 
tain, a fervent spirit is beneficent ; its very 
health is healing ; its peace with God and 
joy from God are doing constant good ; the 
gospel of its smiling aspect impresses stran- 
gers and comforts saints. And besides this 
unconscious and incidental usefulness, its 
active outpourings are a benefit as wide as its 
waters run. A Christian who is both active 



70 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

and fervent is doing perpetual good, and 
good in the most benignant way. The sub- 
stantial service he does is doubly blessed by 
the joyful, loving, and hopeful spirit in which 
he does it ; and though it were only by the 
gladness which skirts its course, and the 
amenities which bloom wherever it overflows, 
beholders might judge how " living," how 
life-awakening that water is, which Jesus 
gives to them that believe in him. 

The best, the healthiest, is that calm and 
constant fervour we have now described ; but 
just as there are intermitting springs which 
take long time to fill, and then exhaust their 
fulness in a single overflow — and as there are 
geysers which jet their vociferous waters high 
in air, and then are silent for long together — 
so there are Christians who do not lack fer- 
vour, but it comes in fits. They are inter- 
mitting springs ; they take long to fill, and 
are emptied in a single gush. Or they are 
geysers. Some years ago they went up in an 
explosion of zeal — a smoking whirlspout of 
fervour — but all is cold and silent now. The 
water is living, but the well is peculiar ; it is 



A FERVENT SPIRIT. . 71 

only periodically filled ; it seldom overflows. 
But just as you would not like to depend on 
an intermitting fountain for your cup of daily 
water, nor to owe the irrigation of your fields 
to the precarious bounty of a boiling spring — 
as the well near which you pitch your tent or 
build your house, is the EJim whose bulging 
fulness invites you to plunge your pitcher at 
any hour, and whose deep-fed copiousness is 
constantly wimpling off in fertilizing streams 
— so you may be happy to perceive the inci- 
dental usefulness even of that zeal which 
comes fitfully; but you would select as the 
benefactor of the church and as your own 
resort, the full heart to which you never 
can come wrong, and whose perennial re- 
dundance bespeaks a secret feeding from 
the river which makes glad the city of our 
God. 

4. A fervent spirit is a happy spirit. 
Health is happiness. Peace with God is the 
life of the soul, and joy in God is its health. 
That assured and elevated believer who enjoys 
every thing in God and God in every thing, 
must needs be fervent. His inward blessed- 



72 • LIFE IN EARNEST. 

ness makes him bountiful, and to do good and 
to communicate are things which, in his happy 
mood of mind, he cannot help. Some Chris- 
tians are too dejected. They get under the 
covert of a peculiar theology, or ensconce 
themselves in shadowy caves of wilfulness, or 
pertinacity, or unbelief ; and then complain that 
they cannot see the Sun of Righteousness. He 
lightens the world. Let them come out be- 
neath his beams, and at once they will feel the 
fire. Their shivering faith, which with them 
is rather the reminiscence of heat than a re- 
sorting to its unfailing source, will soon mount 
up to fervour. To look to Jesus is to come to 
God, and to come home to God is to be happy. 
An estranged or suspicious spirit cannot be 
fervent. 

Then some Christians are not fervent be- 
cause they are cumbered with so many 
things. They carry all their own burdens, 
and from their sympathizing disposition they 
have charged themselves with many bur- 
dens of their brethren also; but instead of 
devolving these personal and relative solici- 
tudes on an all-sufficient Saviour, they carry 
the whole melancholy load themselves. A 



A FERVENT SPIRIT. . 73 

fearful or a fretful spirit cannot be fervent ; 
but there is no need for a believer in Jesus to 
be troubled or afraid. Let him deposit all 
his anxieties in that ear which is gracious 
enough to attend to the most trivial, and leave 
them in that hand which is mighty enough to 
disperse the most tremendous ; and relieved of 
this incubus, his spirit will acquire an elas- 
ticity equal to the most arduous and most mul- 
tifarious toils. Some believers are not suf- 
ficiently fervent, from being straitened in them- 
selves. They do not open their souls to those 
felicitating influences with which a God of love 
surrounds them on every side. There is as 
much comfort in the Word of God, and as 
much beauty in his works, and as much kind- 
ness in his dispensations, as, admitted into the 
soul, would inundate it with ecstasy. But many 
hearts are perverse ; they let gloomy thoughts 
and bitter fancies flow freely in, and are almost 
jealous lest a drop of strong consolation should 
trickle through, on this deluge of Marah. 

It depends on which floodgate you open, 

whether you be drowned in a tide of joy or 

of sorrow. It depends on whether your 

well-springs are above or beneath, whether 

7 



74 • LIFE IN EARNEST. 

your consolation or your grief abounds. 
If you listen to what the Amen, the Faith- 
ful Witness, is saying,*" and what God the 
Father is saying,t and what the Spirit and 
the Bride are saying, J and what a glo- 
rious universe is saying,§ and what the gra- 
cious events in your daily history are saying, || 
your murmurings will subside into silence, 
and your vexing thoughts will be drowned in 
gratitude. Think much of God's chief mercy, 
and take thankful note of his lesser gifts. 
And when you have put on this girdle of glad- 
ness, your glory will sing and your grati- 
tude will dance. If Your soul will be happy, 
and your joy will find outlets of adoring 
praise and vigorous industry. 

5. A fervent spirit is one filled with the 
Spirit of God. When Jesus cried, " If any 
man thirst, let him come unto me and drink," 
and promised that rivers of living water 
should flow through the heart of the believer, 

* John xiv—xvi. t Matt. iii. 17. 

t Rev. xxii. 17. 

§ Ps. viii. xix. civ. 

II Ps. cvii. Isa. xxxviii. 19. Gen. xxxv. 3. 

1T Ps. xxx. 11, 12. 



A FERVENT SPIRIT. 75 

" he spake of the Spirit, which they that be- 
lieve on him should receive." The Holy 
Spirit is actually bestowed on the people of 
God. He is to them a better Spirit, restrain- 
ing and superseding their own. He is the 
author of that athletic self-denial and flesh- 
conquering fervour of which they are conscious 
from time to time. It is he who gives such 
delight in drawing near to God, that the be- 
liever at seasons could " pray and never 
cease ;" and it is he who gives that transform- 
ing affection to the person of Christ, and that 
heroic ardour in the service of Christ, to which 
inactivity is irksome, and silence oppressive. 
And whosoever would enjoy the gentle ma- 
nuduction which leads into all truth and all 
duty — whosoever would persevere in the pla- 
cid discharge of allotted labour, and maintain 
amidst it all a calm and thankful walk with 
God, must put himself at the disposal of this 
heavenly visitant. The heart is " dry as 
summer's dust" from which the Spirit of God 
departs ; and that is the believing, loving, 
happy, and energetic heart in which the Holy 
Spirit dwells. 

6. A fervent spirit is a prayerful spirit. 



76 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

The Holy Spirit is the New Testament 
gift most absolutely promised in answer to 
prayer;* and though, perhaps, the gift whose 
bestowment is least the matter of a lively 
consciousness to the recipient at the moment, 
the gift from which, in the long-run of life, 
the largest and most important results are 
evolved ; and the gift which, in the retrospect 
of eternity, the believer may find that he 
enjoyed more abundantly and more constantly 
than he himself ever imagined. As it is, 
there are times when the presence of this 
Almighty Comforter is easily realized. When 
the soul is lifted far above its natural selfish- 
ness, so that it can make vast sacrifices with- 
out any misgiving ; when fortified against its 
natural timidity, so that it can face frightful 
perils without any trepidation; and when 
invigorated with such unwonted ardour as to 
forget its natural indolence and not feel its 
inherent weakness, the soul can readily un- 
derstand that this mighty strengthening in- 
wardly is the work of the Holy Spirit. And 
it is this persuasion which brings the believer 
strength in weakness. Conscious of lethargy 

* Luke xi. 13. John xiv. 14, 16 ; xvi. 24. 



A FERVENT SPIRIT. 77 

creeping over him ; alarmed at the declension 
of his zeal, and the waning of his love ; 
fearful to what his present apathy may grow, 
and remembering how different were the 
days of old, he breathes a prayer, at first 
faint and desponding, but still a prayer : 
" Wilt thou not revive us again ? Awake, O 
north wind ; come thou south." And, whilst 
he is yet speaking, he begins to revive. As 
if the clear weather were brightening the 
atmosphere, the great realities grow distinct 
and near. The things eternal are seen again, 
and the powers of the coming world are felt. 
His soul is restored. Or a great work is 
given him to do, and his strength is small. 
" O Lord, with thee is the fountain of life. 
Lord, pity me, for I am weak." And the 
Lord pities him, and sends forth his quicken- 
ing Spirit ; and the difficulty is surmounted 
and the work is done : and, without so much 
as feeling the fire and water which lay be- 
tween, he gains the wealthy place. 

7. A fervent spirit is one which easily 

sunders a man from selfishness and sloth and 

other besetting sins. On a winter's day I 

have noticed a row of cottages, with a deep 

7* 



78 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

layer of snow on their several roofs ; but, as 
the day wore on, large fragments began to 
tumble from the eaves of this one and that 
other, till, by and by, there was a simulta- 
neous avalanche, and the whole heap slid 
over, in powdery ruin, on the pavement ; and 
before the sun went down, you saw each roof 
as clear and dry as on a summer's eve. But 
here and there you would observe one with 
its snow-mantle unbroken, and a ruff of stiff 
icicles round it. What made the difference ? 
The difference was to be found within. Some 
of these huts were empty, or the lonely inha- 
bitants cowered over a scanty fire ; whilst the 
peopled hearth and the high-blazing fagots of 
the rest created such an inward warmth that 
grim winter relaxed his earnest gripe, and 
the loosened mass folded off and tumbled 
over on the miry street. It is possible by 
some outside process to push the main volume 
of snow from the frosty roof, or chip off the 
icicles one by one. But they will form again, 
and it needs an inward heat to create a total 
thaw. And so, by sundry processes, you may 
clear off from a man's conduct the dead 
weight of conspicuous sins ; but it needs a 



A FERVENT SPIRIT. 79 

hidden heat, a vital warmth within, to pro- 
duce such a separation between the soul and 
its besetting iniquities, that the whole wintry- 
incubus, the entire body of sin, will come 
spontaneously away. That vital warmth is 
the love of God abundantly shed abroad — the 
kindly glow which the Comforter diffuses in 
the soul which he makes his home. His 
genial inhabitation thaws that soul and its 
favourite sins asunder, and makes the indo- 
lence and self-indulgence and indevotion fall 
off from their old resting-place on that dis- 
solving heart. The easiest form of self-mor- 
tification is a fervent spirit. 

8. And a fervent spirit is the most abun- 
dant source of an active life. In heaven 
there is a perfect activity, because in heaven 
there is a perfect fervour. They are all happy 
there. They have a sufficient end in all they 
do. There is no wearying in their work, for 
there is no waning in their love. The want 
of a sufficient object would make any man 
i'lle. A friend once found the author of " The 
Seasons" in bed long after noon; and up- 
braiding him for his indolence, the poet 
remarked, that he just lay still because, 



80 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

if he were up, he would have nothing to do. 
But, even in this sluggish world, there are 
those whose hearty relish of their work and 
sense of its importance so inspire them, that 
they are very loath when slumber constrains 
them to quit it, and often prevent the dawn- 
ing in order to resume it. It was mathema- 
tical fervour which kept Newton poring on 
his problems till the midnight wind swept 
over his papers the ashes from his long-extin- 
guished fire. It was artistic fervour which 
kept Reynolds with the pencil in his glowing 
hand for thirty-six hours together, evoking 
from the canvas forms of beauty that seemed 
glad to come. It was poetic fervour which 
sustained Dryden in a fortnight's frenzy, 
when composing his Ode on St. Cecilia's day, 
heedless of privations which he did not so 
much as perceive. It was classical fervour 
which, for six successive months, constrained 
the German scholar, Heyne, to allow himself 
no more than two nights of weekly rest, that 
he might complete his perusal of the old 
Greek authors. And it was scientific fer- 
vour which dragged the lazy but eloquent 
French naturalist, BurTon, from beloved slum- 



A FERVENT SPIRIT. 81 

bers to his still more beloved studies, for 
many years together. There is no depart- 
ment of human distinction which cannot re- 
cord its feats of fervour. But shall science, 
with its corruptible crowns, and the world, 
with its vanities, monopolize this enthusiasm ? 
If not, let each one consider, What is the 
greatest self-denial to which a godly zeal has 
prompted me ? Which is the largest or the 
greatest work through which a holy fervour 
has ever carried me?* 

* It would have been right, had there been room, to 
mention some things which are detrimental or fatal to 
fervour of spirit. 1. Guilt on the conscience. 2. Debt 
and worldly entanglements. 3. Sabbaths not sanc- 
tified. 4. Late and frequent visiting. 5. Indulgence 
in frivolous literature. 6. Restraining prayer. 7. A 
wrong theology. 



CHAPTER V. 



THE THREEFOLD CORD. 



"Not slothful in business ; fervent in spirit ; 
serving the Lord" 

Were you ever struck with the sobriety of 
Scripture ? There are many good thoughts 
in human compositions, and many hints of 
truth in human systems ; but in proportion as 
they are original or striking, they border on 
extravagance. You cannot follow them fully 
till you find yourself toppling on the verge 
of a paradox, or are obliged to halt in the 
midst of a glaring absurdity. There are 
many excellent ideas in the old philosophy, 
and some valuable principles in the ethics of 
later schools ; but they all show, though it 
were in nothing but their extremeness, their 
frail original, their human infirmity, their 
wrong-side bias. And so is it with many 
82 



THE THREEFOLD CORD. 83 

religious systems, built on insulated texts of 
Scripture. They are not without a basis of 
truth, but that basis is partial. The ex- 
tremeness of religionism pounces on a single 
text, or a single class of texts, and walls them 
off' from the rest of revelation, and cultivates 
them exclusively, — bestows on them the irri- 
gation of constant study, and reaps no harvests 
except those which grow on this favourite ter- 
ritory, — and looks on all the rest of the Bible 
as a sort of common ; an unenclosed waste ; 
a territory good for little or nothing, except 
a short occasional excursion; ay, and per- 
haps frowns on another class of texts with a 
secret jealousy, as texts which had better never 
have been there ; a dangerous group, whose 
creeping roots or wafted thistle-down threaten 
evil to the enclosure of their own favourite lit- 
tle system. If the texts so treated be doctrinal, 
the result of this partiality, this exclusiveness, 
or extremeness, is sectarianism ; if the texts 
so treated be practical, the result is religious 
singularity. But sectarianism of doctrine 
and singularity of practice, whatever counte- 
nance they get from single clauses and de- 
tached sentences of Scripture, are contradicted 



84 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

and condemned the moment you confront them 
with a complete Bible. Hence it happens, 
that whilst there never was a doctrinal or 
practical error which had not some text to 
stand upon, there never was one which dared 
encounter openly and honestly the entire Word 
of God. In other words, there has seldom 
been an error which did not include some im- 
portant truth ; but just as surely as it included 
some truth, so it excluded others. And just 
as oxygen alone will never make the atmo- 
sphere, or hydrogen alone will never make the 
ocean, or red beams alone will never make the 
sun-light, so one fact, or one set of ideas, will 
never make the truth. A truth, by abiding 
alone, becomes to all intents an error. 

Nothing can be more different from the 
partiality of man than the completeness and 
comprehensiveness of Scripture. Nothing 
can be more opposite to man's extremeness 
than the sobriety of Scripture. It does not 
deal in hyperbole or paradox : it puts forth 
the truth, calmly, fully, and in all its goodly 
proportions. Unlike the systems of man's 
invention, its ethics do not flutter on the 
solitary wing of one only virtue, nor do they 



THE THREEFOLD CORD. 85 

dot along on the uneven legs of a short 
theology and a long morality. Its philan- 
thropy does not consist in hating yourself, 
nor does its love to God require you to 
forget your brother. Its perfection of cha- 
racter is not pre-eminence in one particular, 
nor does it inculcate any excellence which 
requires the annihilation of all the rest. 
Though neither a see-saw of counterpoising 
virtues and vices, nor a neutral mixture of 
opposing elements, there is a balance of ex- 
cellence, a blending of graces, in the Gospel 
ideal of character. It forgets neither the 
man himself, nor the -God above him, nor 
the world around him. It teaches us to live 
godly, but it does not forget to teach us to 
live righteously and soberly. It urges dili- 
gence in business, but it does not omit to 
enjoin fervour of spirit and devotedness to the 
Lord. 

I do not know that we can select a more 
opportune exemplification of these contrary 
principles,* — the partiality of human religion 
and the comprehensiveness of scriptural reli- 
gion, — than the passage with which you are 
now so familiar, and the treatment which its 
8 



LIFE IX EARNEST. 



several precepts have received at the hands 
of men. I think it may be very easily shown 
that each separate clause has been the motto 
of a several sect, the watchword of a separate 
party ; — each right, so far as it remembered 
that special clause ; each wrong, so far as it 
forgot the other two. 

1. First, "Not slothful in business." There 
have been in all ages those who were very 
willing to sum up religion in discharging the 
duties of their calling. If they were at ser- 
vice, they were conscious of great industry, 
and a real attention to their employers' inte- 
rest. If wives or mothers, they were notable 
for keeping at home, and caring after their 
own concerns. They looked w^ell to the ways 
of their household, and ate not the bread of 
idleness ; and could the trim threshold and 
each tidy arrangement of the well-ordered 
dwelling tell the full tale of anxious thoughts, 
and early rising, and worrying bustle, which 
have been expended upon them, happy the 
empire which had such prime minister as rules 
this little realm. If $nen of business, they 
feel that they are busy men. They mind 
their own affairs, and do not interfere in other 



THE THREEFOLD CORD. 87 

men's matters. They are at it late and early ; 
the summer's sun does not seduce them from 
their dingy counting-room, nor do the ameni- 
ties of literature bewitch them from the 
anxieties of money-making. They seldom 
treat themselves to a holiday, and what is 
more to the purpose, they do not despatch bu- 
siness by halves ; they work in good earnest. 
They feel as if the chief end of man lay some- 
where about the terminus of their own trade 
or profession, and they push on accordingly. 
Then there mingles with it all a complacent 
feeling. " It is not for myself I thus tug and 
strain, and grow prematurely old ; it is for 
others. 'He that provides not for his own 
house hath denied the faith, and is worse 
than an infidel.' 'If any man will not work, 
neither let him eat.' We are commanded to 
redeem the time, and are forbidden to be 
slothful in business." And if to this again 
should be superadded a certain amount of 
overt and ostensible religion, — if this busy 
man or cumbered housekeeper should withal 
read a chapter daily, and maintain the regular 
form of family worship, and the equally re- 
gular form of church-going, — above all, if his 



DO LIFE IN EARNEST. 

business should prosper, and nothing occur 
to vex his conscience, he is very apt to feel 
" What lack I yet ? True, I pretend to no 
peculiar sanctity ; but I believe I am as 
honest and industrious and sober as those 
who do. I may not get into the raptures 
into which some try to work themselves, nor 
do I fuss about from sermon to sermon and 
from meeting to meeting, as many do ; but I 
believe my respect for religion is as real, and 
my intentions as good as theirs. And though 
I do not lay the same stress on speculative 
points and matters of faith, no man can accuse 
me of neglecting the weightier matters of the 
law." Now the industrious element in this 
character is good, but if this be the whole of 
it, in the Bible balance it will be found de- 
plorably wanting. A man may be all that 
you describe yourself, without being born 
again. He may be all this, and his heart 
never have been made right with God ; and 
of all the work he has done so heartily, no- 
thing may have been done as unto the Lord, 
— in the animation of that love, and in the 
singleness of that loyalty, without which 
the most fagging toil is but an earnest self- 



THE THREEFOLD CORD. 89 

idolatry. And he may be all this without 
any of that fervour of spirit which will make 
a man happy in that world, where the things 
of our present faith are the visible sources 
of joy, and where psalm-singing and the 
other outpourings of ecstatic hearts are the 
exercises most congenial. 

2. But then again, "fervent in spirit." 
Others have erred in subliming the whole 
of Christianity into fervour. They fancy that 
there is no outlet for piety except in emotion. 
They forget that the engine may be doing 
most work when none of the steam is blowing 
off; and therefore they are not content ex- 
cept they feel a great deal, and live in con- 
stant excitement. They forget that the best 
form that feeling can take is the practical 
form, the praying, praising, working form. 
Or if it should take this form, their fervour is 
ill-directed. It is not fairly distributed ; they 
are fervent in secret or in the sanctuary, but 
not fervent in society ; they are fervent in 
controversies, but not in truths conceded; 
they are fervent in the things of their own 
denomination, but not in the things of Jesus 
Christ ; or if fervent in his cause, they fix on 
8* 



90 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

the fields of labour far away, and contemn 
those nearer home. Their fervour is reserved 
for hallowed places and devotional hours, and 
does not pervade their daily life. They will 
rise from a prayer in which they have ex- 
patiated on the glory of the latter day, " Thy 
kingdom come, thy will be done on earth 
as it is in heaven," and some ordinary 
duty is awaiting them ; they are asked to 
fulfil some prosaic service, to do some such 
matter-of-fact employment as angels in heaven 
are apt to do ; and the sight of actual labour 
disperses their good frame in a moment ; 
their praying fervour is not a working fervour. 
Or they have just been singing, under some 
extraordinary afflatus, a hymn about universal 
peace or millennial glory ; but the unopened 
letter turns out to be a despatch from some 
nefarious correspondent, or the moment the 
worship is over some gross negligence or 
some provoking carelessness accosts them, 
and the instant explosion proves, that were 
they living in the millennium, there would be 
at least one exception to the universal peace. 
Or they have come back from some jubilant 
missionary meeting, where their hearts were 



THE THREEFOLD CORD. 91 

really warm, where they loudly applauded 
speeches, and where their eyes overflowed at 
the recital of some affecting instance of libe- 
rality ; and they are hardly safe in their 
homes, when the ill-favoured collector assails 
them, and they are asked for the solid sym- 
pathy of their substance. After they have 
given their tears, to be asked for their gold ! 
They feel as if it were a fatal transition, 
a most headlong climax, from delicious 
emotion down to vulgar money. And thus 
it is that they continue to let as much 
feeling vanish in inaction, as much fervour 
fly off in mere emotion, as, if turned on in the 
right direction, might have propelled some 
mighty enterprise, or conducted to a safe and 
joyful conclusion many a work of faith and 
labour of love. 

3. "Serving the Lord." In Old Testa- 
ment times it was not unusual for persons of 
eminent piety to dedicate themselves entirely 
to temple-service, waiting on God in prayer 
continually night and day. Thus Samuel was 
dedicated to the Lord all the days of his life : 
so we presume was the maid of Gilead, Jeph- 
thah's daughter ; and so was Anna the pro- 



92 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

phetess,who departed not from the temple the 
eighty-four years of her long widowhood. In 
seeking this seclusion, they were practically 
carrying out the Psa]mist's devout behest, 
" One thing have I desired of the Lord, that 
will I seek after; that I may dwell in the 
house of the Lord all the days of my life, to 
behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire 
in his temple." And a pleasant life it were, 
away from a stormy world in the calm pavi- 
lion of God's own presence, and away from 
the tantalizing phantoms, vexing cares, and 
stunning noise of delirious mortality, to see 
no beauty less soul-filling than his own, and 
hear no voice less assuring than his who says, 
"My peace I give unto you." But the gos- 
pel dispensation is not the era of anchorets 
and recluses and temple-devotees; or more 
properly speaking, every disciple of the Sa- 
viour ought to be alike a devotee. He should 
live not to himself, but to Him who loved 
him. He should be a self-devoted, a dedi- 
cated man ; a living sacrifice, but a sacrifice 
diffusing its sweet savour in the scenes of or- 
dinary life, and regaling not heaven alone, but 
earth with its grateful exhalations. He should 



THE THREEFOLD CORD. 93 

seek to behold his Lord's beauty and dwell in 
his Lord's presence all the days of his life; 
but now that neither at Jerusalem nor at Sama- 
ria is the temple, his believing heart should be 
the shrine, and his ascending Saviour's pro- 
mise, " Lo, I am with you," should be the 
Shekinah. Wherever he goes, he should 
carry his Lord's presence along with him, 
and whatever he is doing he should be 
doing his Heavenly Master's work. How- 
ever, this life of active devotedness does 
not suit the taste of many. In order to serve 
the Lord they feel that they must leave the 
living world. They must off and away to 
some cleft of the rock, some lodge of the far 
wilderness, some 

" sacred solitude, 
" Where Quiet with Religion makes her home." 

To be diligent in business they feel incompa- 
tible with serving the Lord; and even that 
more hallowed business which is occupied 
with ministering to the bodies and souls of 
men, is a rude break in their retirement, a 
jar in their contemplative joys. They would 



94 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

rather be excused from any thing which forces 
them into contact with unwelcome flesh and 
blood, and reminds them of this selfish world 
and its gross materialism. Their closet is 
more attractive than the cottage of poverty; 
meditations of "the rest which remaineth" are 
more congenial than toils in the work of the 
day ; and pensive lamentations over the world's 
wickedness come more spontaneously than real 
earnest efforts to make this bad world better. 
Now it is impossible to be too devoted if that 
devotedness make you correspondingly fervent 
in spirit and diligent in business. You cannot 
pray too much, though you should pray with- 
out ceasing, if your prayer take a practical 
direction, and lead you to do good without 
ceasing. But it is just as possible to run 
away from the Lord's service by running into 
retirement as by running into the world. In 
the retirement of the ship, and then in the 
completer retirement of the whale's belly, 
Jonah was as much a rebel and a runaway 
as in the noisy streets of Joppa. Had he 
wished to " serve the Lord," his " business" 
was to have been at Nineveh. And it little 
matters whether it be the recluse of the de- 



THE THREEFOLD CORD. 95 

sert who absconds from his brethren, and 
leaves the sick to tend themselves, and the 
ignorant to teach themselves, and the careless 
to convert themselves ; or the recluse of the 
closet, who leaves the neglected household to 
take care of itself, the slip-shod children to 
look after themselves, and the broken furniture 
to mend itself; each in his own way is sloth- 
ful in business, under a self-deceiving pretext 
that he is serving the Lord. 

Thus you perceive that each of the three 
classes, the mere bustlers, the mere feelers, 
and the mere devotees, by being right in 
only one thing, are altogether wrong. These 
are not fancy sketches, nor are they studies 
after the antique. True, you may find the 
counterpart of the first class in the correct mo- 
rality and heartless formalism of that worldly 
professorship, that "Whole Duty of Man" 
pharisaism of a former age. And you may 
represent the second by that antinomian 
fervour, that unproductive zeal which has 
marked some periods of the church, — 
which possibly marks some sections still. 
And you will find the third exemplified in 
all the mystic devotion and day-dreaming 



96 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

quietism of world-weary recluses, popish and 
protestant, in every age. Though all can quote 
one fragment of this passage, all are wrong 
by not being able to quote the whole. Those 
who are diligent in business, but in that busi- 
ness do not serve the Lord, their selfish dili- 
gence is but a busy idleness, a hypocritical 
activity. Their time-bounded and self-revert- 
ing work is the ineffectual labour of the con- 
vict who digs the pit and fills it up again, 
who draws water from the well and pours 
it back again. And so the devotedness which 
results in no diligence is like the planning 
of a house which is never built, the daily 
purposing of a journey which is never set 
about. The fervour of spirit which, withal, 
is slothful in business, is like the stream 
falling on the mill-wheel, but the connecting 
shaft is broken, and though the wheel turns 
nimbly round, the detached machinery stands 
still, and no work is done ; or like the dis- 
connected engine and tender, which bolt away 
by themselves, and leave the helpless train 
still standing where it stood. 

Now in opposition to all these defective 
versions, these maimed and truncated repre- 



THE THREEFOLD CORD. 97 

sentations, this verse delineates the Christian 
character in its completeness, hard-working, 
warmly-feeling, single-eyed, " not slothful in 
business," " fervent in spirit," " serving the 
Lord." And if you look at the Chris- 
tian philosophy of the subject, you will find 
that it is the single eye which awakes the 
fervent spirit, and the fervent spirit which 
sets the busy hands and feet in willing mo- 
tion. 

1. It is an eye fixed on Jesus which kindles 
the fervent spirit. An unconverted man is 
not happy. There is a dull load on his 
spirit — a dim cloud on his conscience — he 
scarcely knows what he would be at — but he 
certainly is not happy. If a considerate man, 
he is aware that there must be a joy in exist- 
ence which he has not yet struck out — a 
secret of more solid bliss which he hitherto 
has not hit upon. He is not at peace with 
God. He has not secured an explicit recon- 
ciliation with his Creator and Sovereign. 
God's frown is upon him, a frown as wide as 
is the sinner's universe. Go where he may, 
lie cannot get out into the clear daylight of. 
a glad conscience and a propitious heaven. 
9 



98 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

And it is not till he finds his way into the 
Goshen of the gospel, the sun-lit region on 
which the beams of God's countenance still 
smile down ; it is not till, from the gross 
darkness and palpable gloom of a natural 
condition, a man is led into the grateful light 
and glorious liberty of the sons of God ; it is 
not till then that he knows the ecstasy of un- 
diluted joy and the perfection of that peace 
which passeth all understanding. 

It is not till the spirit of adoption makes 
him a child of God that he thoroughly feels 
himself a man ; and it is in the sweet sense 
of forgiveness, and in the transporting assur- 
ance that he is now on the same side with 
Omnipotence, that he first breathes freely. 
The thrill of a sudden animation sweeps 
through all his frame; and, encountering an 
unwonted gayety all around him, he per- 
ceives an unwonted energy within him. 
Peace with God has brought him power 
from God, and (with the Lord, he loves, to 
dictate) there is no work which he is loath 
to do ; and with that Lord upon his side, 
none which he cannot hope to do. The con- 
vict-labour and hireling-tasks of the prisoner 



THE THREEFOLD CORD. 99 

and bondsman are exchanged for the free- 
will offerings and affectionate services of a 
son and a disciple. Reconciled to God, he is 
reconciled to every thing which comes from 
God ; and full of the love of Christ, he courts 
every thing which he can do for Christ. 
" Come, labour, for I rather love thee now. 
Come, hard work and long work, I am in a 
mood for you now. Come, trials and crosses, 
for I can carry you now. Come, death, for I 
am ready for thee now." 

His relation to Christ has put him in a 
new relation to every thing else ; and the 
same fountain which has washed the stain 
from his conscience having washed the 
scales from his eyes, an inundation of light 
and of beauty burst in from the creation 
around him, which hitherto was to him as 
much an unknown universe as its Creator 
was the unknown God; and the boundless 
inflowings of peaceful images, and happy 
impressions, and strong consolations, dilate 
his soul with an elasticity, an enterprise 
and courage as new as they are divine. 
He has found a Saviour, and his soul is 
happy. The Lord Jesus is his friend ; and 



100 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

his spirit, once so frigid, is become a fervent 
spirit. His new views have made him a new 
man. 

2. The fervent spirit creates the indus- 
trious life. Sulky labour and the labour of 
sorrow are little worth. Whatever a man 
does with a guilty feeling he is apt to do 
wrong ; and whatever he does with a melan- 
choly feeling he is likely to do by halves. 
Look at that little boy sitting down to his 
hated lesson after a burst of passion. Do 
you notice how long the same page lies open 
before the pouting student, and how solemnly 
he watches the blue-bottle raging round the 
room and bouncing against the window ? 
Look at his blurred copy-book, its trembling 
strokes and blotted loops, a memento of this 
angry morning. And the sum upon the 
slate, only here and there a figure right, an 
emblem of his rebellious mind, all at sixes and 
sevens with itself. It is guilt that makes him 
a trifler. It is guilt that makes him blunder. 
Guilt makes him wretched ; and therefore all 
he does is wrong. 

But, sometimes, grief disables or disinclines 
for exertion as much as guilt. You may 



THE THREEFOLD CORD. 101 

remember times when such a sorrow possessed 
you, that you not only forgot to eat your daily 
bread, but had no heart to do your daily work. 
You did not care to set your house in order ; 
for some stunning intelligence or fearful fore- 
boding had paralyzed all your energy. You 
did not care to hear your children's tasks ; for 
the shadows of a sick-room had diffused a look 
of orphanage on them and on every thing. 
And the more delightsome the recreation once 
had been, the more congenial the labour, so 
much the deeper was the funeral dye it had 
now assumed, and the more did your heart 
revolt from it. Sorrow makes the eyes heavy, 
even when they cannot sleep ; and, for ineffi- 
ciency, next to the blundering work of a guilty 
conscience, is the dull work of a weary or 
wounded spirit. If you could only shed tran- 
quillity over the conscience, and infuse joy into 
the soul, you would do more to make the man 
a thorough worker than if you could lend him 
the force of Hercules, or the hundred arms of 
Briareus. Now, the gospel freely admitted 
makes the man happy. It gives him peace 
with God and makes him happy in God. Its 
strong consolation neutralizes the sting of 
9* 



102 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

reluctant labour and the curse of penal toil. 
Its advent of heavenly energy takes the lan- 
guor out of life, and much of its inherent 
indolence out of lazy human nature. It chases 
spectres from the fancy and lions from the 
street. It gives industry a noble look which 
selfish drudgery never wore ; and from the 
moment that a man begins to do his work for 
his Saviour's sake, he feels that the most 
ordinary employments are full of sweetness 
and dignity ; and that the most difficult are 
not impossible. " Through Christ strengthen- 
ing me I can do all things." Even in the 
affairs of ordinary life, the best — the most 
beautiful and effective work which a man can 
do is full-hearted work ; the ingenious, conclu- 
sive, tasteful work which quits the masterly 
hands or the invigorated mind of him whose 
heart is glad. And if any one of you, my 
friends, is weary with his work ; if dissatis- 
faction with yourself, or sorrow of any kind, 
disheartens you ; if, at any time, you feel the 
dull paralysis of conscious sin, or the depress- 
ing influence of vexing thoughts, look to 
Jesus and be happy. Be happy, and your 
joyful work will prosper well. 



CHAPTER VI. 

A WORD TO EACH AND TO ALL — CONCLUSION. 



" Not slothful in business; fervent in Spirit; 
serving the Lord" 

Christian industry is just the outlet of a 
fervent spirit, a Christ-devoted heart. The 
industry which is not fervent is not Christian, 
and on the other hand, the love which does 
not come forth in action, the fervour which 
does not lead to diligence, will soon die down. 
He who has an eye to Christ in all he does, 
and whose spirit is full of that energy, that 
love to his work and his brethren and his 
Master in heaven, which the Holy Spirit 
gives, will not soon be weary in well-doing. 
- Many occupy the humble station of servants, 
and of these, some are in families where there 
is no fear of God, and some of them serve em- 
ployers who take no interest in them ; who, 
however hard their toil, and however well they 
do their work, never thank them nor notice 

103 



104 LIFE IX EARNEST. 

their exertions. This is discouraging. But 
we may say to such — before you entered that 
family, had you not entered the service of the 
Lord Jesus Christ ? And when you came to this 
new place you surely did not leave this higher 
and nobler service. Very true, the individual 
from whom you receive your immediate orders 
may be very unreasonable, and exceedingly 
unamiable, and the thanks you get may be 
sorry remuneration for your conscientious in- 
dustry. But have you not a Master in Heaven, 
whose eye is always upon you, who takes in- 
terested note of all you do, and who, whatever 
you do in secret for his sake, will reward you 
openly ? You do not mean to say that all your 
end in working is to get so much wages, with 
a kind word or a look of approval now and then. 
If you carry the spirit of discipleship into your 
every-day duties, you will find that there is a 
way to make the meanest occupation honour- 
able, and the most irksome employment easy. 
Work, which you do for the Lord's sake, 
will never be wearisome, and however little 
man may notice or acknowledge it, your 
labour in the Lord will never be vain. And I 
know not if there be any department of life 



A WORD TO ALL. 105 

where there is more abundant room for a truly 
Christian ambition than the calling which you 
occupy. 

Whether like Eliezer of Damascus, you 
serve a Father of the Faithful, or like Joseph 
and the Israelitish maid, you are in the house- 
hold of a pagan or a worldling ; you have sin- 
gular opportunities for adorning the doctrine of 
your God and Saviour. Good man as Abraham 
was, and good man as Eliezer was, there was 
once a time when Abraham, in a tone of evi- 
dent disappointment, said, " Behold, to me thou 
hast given no seed, and lo, one born in my 
house is mine heir." But so completely had 
the consistent kindness and fidelity of Eliezer 
won the affection of his chief, that, at the last, 
Abraham could scarcely have wished a better 
heir than his servant, or Eliezer found a more 
indulgent father than his master. 

Joseph had no motive for serving Pharaoh, 
except that anxiety to fulfil an important office 
well, and that hearty love of labour which dis- 
tinguish men of a healthy mind and con- 
scientious spirit. But such a zealous charge 
did he take of Pharaoh's interests, so intelli- 
gently and sleeplessly did his eye travel 



106 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

through the realm, that Egypt wore another 
aspect under Joseph's rule, and its revenues 
became as rich as a provident and benignant 
administration could make them. 

The little maid of Israel was a captive, and 
if the joy of the Lord had not been her strength, 
she would have had no spirit to work. She 
would have pined after her home among the 
hills of Samaria, and when she thought of the 
pleasant cottage from which fierce ruffians had 
torn her away, and named over to herself, one 
by one, the playfellows whom she would never 
see again, she would have broken her young 
heart and sat down in sulky silence, or perhaps 
have died. But she loved the Lord God of 
Israel ; and as he had sent her to Damascus 
and into the house of a heathen lady, she 
made up her mind and set to work right 
earnestly, and soon began to take a real interest 
in her new abode. She loved her mistress, 
and was sorry for the deplorable sufferings of 
her afflicted lord, and suggested the visit to 
Elisha which resulted in his wondrous cure. 
And both Joseph and the little maid, by 
serving the Lord with a fervent spirit, not 
only made their own life pass pleasantly in 



A WORD TO ALL. 107 

a foreign land, but they made a great impres- 
sion on those around them. Joseph's God 
was magnified in the eyes of Pharaoh, and the 
little maid soon saw Naaman a worshipper of 
the true Jehovah. 

And you who are in the service of others, 
seek to serve the Lord. Perhaps like Joseph 
and the little maid you are far from home. 
Perhaps like them you are doing work for 
those in whom you had no interest formerly, 
and who even now have not the fear of God 
before them. But your Lord paramount is the 
Lord Jesus himself ; the real Master who has 
sent you here and given you this uphill work 
to do is Christ ; and if you only set about it 
for his sake, with a happy, interested, resolute 
mind, your work will grow every day easier ; 
your conscience will sing ; the light of the 
Lord's presence will gild the dim passages and 
stranger-looking chambers of your place of 
sojourn ; your character will ere long com- 
mend itself, and better still, may commend 
your Master in heaven. "For he that in 
these things serveth Christ is acceptable to 
God, and approved of men." 



108 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

2. Some of us are scholars either re- 
ceiving the education which fits for ordinary 
life, or which may qualify us for some par- 
ticular profession. Here too we have need 
of industry. I hope you love learning for its 
own sake ; I hope you love it still more for 
the Lord's sake. The more things you know, 
and the more things you can do, the more 
respected, and consequently, the more influ- 
ential and useful will you hereafter be. If 
you grow up in ignorance, few will care 
for your company. People will be laughing 
at your mistakes and your blunders. And 
even if you should be wishful to do good, 
you will scarcely know how to set about it. 
The usefulness and happiness of your future 
life depend very much on the amount of solid 
learning and graceful accomplishments, and 
above all, on the extent of Bible knowledge 
which you presently acquire, and if you be 
only willing you may acquire as much as ever 
you please. "Nothing is denied to well- 
directed diligence." Long ago, a little boy 
was entered at Harrow School, in England. 
He was put into a class beyond his years, and 



A WORD TO ALL. 109 

where all the scholars had the advantage of 
previous instruction, denied to him. His master 
chid him for his dulness, and all his own efforts 
could not raise him from the lowest place on 
the form. But, nothing daunted, he procured 
the grammars and other elementary books 
which his class-fellows had gone through in 
previous terms. He devoted the hours of 
play, and not a few of the hours of sleep, to 
the mastering of these ; till in a few weeks he 
gradually began to rise, and it was not long 
before he shot far a-head of all his companions, 
and became not only leader of that division, but 
the pride of Harrow. That boy, whose career 
began with this fit of energetic application, 
lived to be the greatest oriental scholar of mo- 
dern Europe, and most of you have heard his 
name — It was Sir William Jones. 

God denies nothing in the way of learning 
to well-directed diligence. It is possible that 
you may be rather depressed than stimulated 
when asked to contemplate some famous name 
in literature or science. When you see the 
lofty pinnacle of attainment on which that 
name is now reposing, you feel as if it had 
been created there rather than had travelled 
10 



110 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

thither. No such thing. The most illustrious 
in the annals of philosophy once knew no 
more of it than you now do. And how did 
he arrive at his peerless proficiency ? By dint 
of diligence, by downright pains-taking. 

When Newton was asked how he came by 
those discoveries which looked like divination 
or intuitions of a higher intelligence rather 
than the results of mere research, he declared 
that he could not otherwise account for them 
unless it were that he could pay longer atten- 
tion to the subject than most men cared to do. 
In other words, it was by diligence in his 
business that he became the most renowned 
of British sages. 

The discovery of gravitation, the grand 
secret of the universe, was not whispered in 
his ear by any oracle. It did not drop into 
his idle lap, a windfall from the clouds. But 
he reached it by self-denying toil, by mid- 
night study, by the large command of accurate 
science, and by bending all his powers of 
mind in the one direction, and keeping them 
thus bent. 

And whatever may be the subject of your 
pursuit, if you have any natural aptitude for 



A WORD TO ALL. Ill 

it at all, there is no limit to your proficiency 
except the limits of your own pains-taking. 
There is no wishing-cap which will bring you 
knowledge from the east or west. It is not 
likely to visit you in a morning dream, nor will 
it drop through your study roof into your elbow 
chair. It is not a lucky visiter which will alight 
on your loitering path during some twilight, 
like Minerva's owl, and create you an orator, 
an artist, or a scholar on the spot. It is a point 
of excellence which you must make up your 
mind that it is worth your while attaining; and 
trudge on steadily towards it, and not count 
that day's work hard, nor that night-watching 
long, which advances you one step towards it, 
or brings its welcoming beacon one bright hope 
nearer. 

3. Some of us are teachers. It is much 
to be lamented that there are so few enthusi- 
asts in this honourable and important work. 
Many who are engaged in it regard it as a 
bondage, and sigh for the day which shall 
finally release them from its drudgery and 
din. They have never felt that theirs is a 
high calling, nor do they ever enter the 
school-room with the inspiring consciousness, 



112 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

that they go as missionaries and pastors there. 
They undervalue their scholars. Instead of 
regarding them as all that now exists of a 
generation as important as our own ; instead 
of recognising in their present dispositions 
the mischief or beneficence which must tell 
on wide neighbourhoods ere a few short years 
are run ; instead of training up immortal 
spirits and expansive minds for usefulness 
now and glory afterward, many teachers have 
never seen their pupils in any other light 
than as so many rows of turbulent rebels, a 
rabble of necessary torments, a roomfull of 
that mighty plague with which the Nile of 
our noisy humanity is all croaking and jump- 
ing over. 

And many undervalue themselves. Instead of 
recollecting their glorious vocation, and eyeing 
the cloud of teacher-witnesses with whom they 
are encompassed ; instead of a high-souled 
zeal for their profession, as that which should 
form the plastic mind after the finest models of 
human attainment and scriptural excellence, 
many regard their office as so menial that 
they have always the feeling as if them- 
selves were pedants. To prescribe the task, 



A WORD TO ALL. 113 

to hear the lesson, to administer monotonous 
praise and blame, is the listless round of 
their official doings. But there are few 
fields of brighter promise than the calling 
of a teacher. If he give himself wholly to 
it, if he set before him the highest object 
of all tuition, the bringing souls to Christ; 
if he can form a real affection for his scholars, 
and maintain a parental anxiety for their 
proficiency and their principles ; if he has 
wisdom enough to understand them, and 
kindness enough to sympathize with them; 
if he has sufficient love for learning to have 
no distaste for lessons, he will be sure to 
inspire a zeal for study into the minds of 
many, he will win the love of all except 
the very few whose hearts are deaf-born, 
aad in a short time the best features of 
his own character will be multiplying in 
spheres far-sundered, in the kindred per- 
sons of grateful pupils. Should he live 
long enough, they will praise him in the 
gate of public life, or cheer his declining days 
in the homes which he taught them to make 
happy. Or should he die soon enough, the 
rest from his labours will ever and anon be 
10* 



114 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

heightened by the arrival of another and 
another of the children whom God hath given 
him. 

But without descending to more minute 
particulars, let me remind all who are mem- 
bers of the church that they have a special 
"business" as the professed disciples of Jesus 
Christ. In the day when Christ said to you, 
"Arise, follow me," he called you to a life 
like his own, a life of industry and self- 
denial, and continual doing good. You are 
a consistent Christian in proportion as you 
resemble him whose fervent spirit poured 
out not more in his midnight prayers than 
in his daily deeds of mercy, and who, whether 
he disputed with the doctors in the Temple, 
or conversed with the ignorant stranger at the 
well, or fed the five thousand with miraculous 
loaves, or summoned Lazarus from the tomb, 
was still about his Father's " business." 

They little understand the Christian life, 
who fancy that a slothful or languid profes- 
sion will secure an abundant entrance into the 
heavenly kingdom. If the believer's progress 
from the cross to the crown be, as it is again 
and again represented, a race, a wrestling, a 



A WORD TO ALL. 115 

warfare, a fight, a continual watching, and a 
constant violence, there is good reason for the 
exhortations, " give diligence to make your 
calling and election sure. We desire that 
every one of you do show diligence to the full 
assurance of hope unto the end ; that ye be 
not slothful, but followers of them who through 
faith and patience inherit the promises. 
Wherefore, brethren, seeing that you look for 
such things, be diligent that you may be found 
of him in peace, without spot and blameless." 
It needs diligence to keep the conscience 
clean. " Herein do I exercise myself, to have 
always a conscience void of offence toward 
God and toward men." It needs diligence 
to keep up a happy hopefulness of spirit. 
" Gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, 
and hope to the end." It needs diligence to 
maintain a serene and strenuous orthodoxy. 
"Watch ye ; stand fast in the faith ; quit you 
like men ; be strong." It needs diligence to 
maintain a blameless life. "Ye have not yet 
resisted unto blood, striving against sin." It 
needs diligence to lead a life conspicuously 
useful and God-glorifying. " Seeing we are 
compassed about with so great a cloud of 



116 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

witnesses, (as Abel, and Enoch, and Noah 
and Abraham, and Moses,) let us lay aside 
every weight, and the sin which doth so 
easily beset us, and let us run with patience 
the race that is set before us, looking unto 
Jesus." And it needs diligence to attain a 
joyful welcome from Jesus and a full reward. 
" And besides this, giving all diligence, add 
to your faith, virtue (fortitude); and to for- 
titude, knowledge ; and to knowledge, tem- 
perance ; and to temperance, patience ; and 
to patience, godliness ; and to godliness, bro- 
therly kindness ; and to brotherly-kindness, 
charity. Wherefore the rather, brethren, give 
diligence to make your calling and election 
sure ; for if ye do these things (fortitude, &c.) 
ye shall never fall : for so an entrance shall 
be ministered unto you abundantly into the 
everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christ." "And I heard a voice from 
heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the 
dead which die in the Lord from henceforth : 
yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from 
their labours, and their works do follow them." 
"Let us labour, therefore, to enter into that rest."* 

* 2 Pet. i. 5—7, 10, 11. Rev. xiv. 13. Heb. iv. li. 



A WORD TO ALL. 117 

To labour in the word and doctrine is the 
business of one ; to feed the flock of God and 
rule the Church of Christ is the business of 
others ; to " serve tables," to care for and 
comfort the poor, and see that all things be 
done decently and in order, is the business of 
yet others ; to teach the young and instruct 
the ignorant is the business of some ; and to 
train up their households in the nurture and 
admonition of the Lord is the business of, 
others ; to obey their parents and to grow in 
wisdom — in favour with God and man — is the 
business of many ; and to do work for others, 
with a willing hand and a single eye, is the 
business of many more. The work of the 
day needs diligence ; much more does the 
work of eternity. It needs fervent diligence 
to be constantly serving our fellows ; and it 
needs no less diligence to be directly serving 
Christ. To tend the sick, to visit the widows 
and fatherless in their affliction, to frequent 
the abodes of insulated wretchedness or con- 
gregated depravity, to set on foot schemes of 
Christian benevolence and still more to keep 
them going — all this needs diligence. To 
put earnestness into secret prayer; to offer 



118 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

petitions so emphatic and express, that they 
are remembered afterwards, and the answer 
watched for and expected ; to commune with 
one's own heart, so as to attain some real self- 
acquaintance ; to get into that humble, con- 
trite, confessing frame, where the soul feels 
it sweet to lie beneath the cross, and 

"A debtor to mercy alone, 
Of covenant mercy to sing ;" 

to stir up one's soul to a thankful praising 
pitch ; to beat down murmuring thoughts 
and drive vexing thoughts away ; to feel 
assurance regarding the foundations of the 
truth, and clear views of the truth itself; 
to have a prompt and secure command of 
scripture ; to possess a large acquaintance 
with the great salvation, and a minute ac- 
quaintance with all the details of Christian 
duty ; — all this needs no less diligence on 
our part, because God must give it or we 
shall never show it. To put life into fa- 
mily worship ; to make it more than a du- 
teous routine ; to make its brief episode of 
praise and prayer and Bible-reading a re- 
freshful ordinance, and influential on the day ; 
to give a salutary direction to social inter- 



A WORD TO ALL. 119 

course, and season with timely salt the con- 
versation of the friendly circle ; to drive that 
" torpid ass," the body, to scenes of duty 
difficult and long* adjourned ; to make a real 
business of public worship ; to scowl away all 
pretexts for forsaking the solemn assembly ; 
to spirit the reluctant flesh into a punctual 
arrival at the house of prayer, and then to stir 
up the soul to a cordial participation in all its 
services ; to accompany with alert and affec- 
tionate eyes the reading* of God's word., and 
listen with wakeful ear to the exposition and 
application of its lively oracles ; to contribute 
a tunefufVoice and a singing heart to our new 
testament offering of praise, and to put the 
whole stress of an intelligent and sympathizing 
and believing earnestness into the supplica- 
tions of the sanctuary, so that each petition 
shall ascend to the throne of grace with the 
deliberate signature of our Amen — all this 
requires a diligence, none the less because 
unless God work it in us, we shall never 
of ourselves muster up sufficient fervour thus 
to serve the Lord. 

Dear Christian readers, consider what I 
say. There is little time to apply it ; but 



120 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

you have received from this passage of Holy- 
Scripture some hints of important truth — ap- 
ply them for yourselves. As reasons why 
we desire to see the church more industrious 
and not less fervent and unworldly than the 
church has usually been, and as motives why 
each right-hearted man among us should this 
day start afresh on a career of busy devoted- 
ness and fervent industry, let me remind you, 

1. Herein is the Father glorified, that ye 
bear much fruit. 

2. Herein will you truly resemble, and in 
measure re-exhibit the character of your 
blessed Lord and Master. 

3. Hereby will yourselves be made far 
happier. 

4. Hereby will the world be the better for 
your sojourn in it. 

5. Hereby will the sadness of your de- 
parture be exceedingly alleviated. 

6. And hereby will your everlasting joy be 
unspeakably enhanced. 

Forbearing to dwell on these different con- 
siderations, let me revert for a little to the 
latter two. 

A life of diligence and holy fervour pre- 



CONCLUSION. 121 

pares the believer for a peaceful depar- 
ture. " Father, I have finished the work 
which thou gavest me to do; and now I 
come to thee." It was with unspeakable sa- 
tisfaction that the Saviour contemplated his 
return to the Father's bosom; and the rea- 
son was, because he knew so well that he 
had finished his Father's business. He could 
look back on the weary days and sleepless 
nights of his ministry, on the long years of 
his incarnation, and he saw that there was no 
righteousness which he had not fulfilled, no 
precept of the holy law which he had not 
magnified. His memory could not recal an 
idle word or a wasted hour; and even from 
the solemn twilight of Gethsemane his eye 
could trace serenely back the whole expanse 
of his earthly history, and see not one word 
which he would wish to recal, not one act 
which he could desire to alter; no sermon 
which, if he had to preach it over again, he 
would make more plain or more importunate ; 
no miracle which, if it had to be performed 
afresh, he would do in a more impressive or 
effectual manner. He knew that there was no 
11 



122 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

omission, no defect, and though the whole 
were to be done anew, he felt that the words 
could not be more gracious, nor the works 
more wonderful than they had actually been. 
" Father, I have glorified thee on earth. I 
have finished the work which thou gavest me 
to do ; and now I come to thee." 

The Lord Jesus was the first and the last 
who ever was able to say this ; but through 
his strength made perfect in their weakness, 
some have made a nearer approach to this 
blessedness than their more remiss and indo- 
lent brethren. It was the grief of the pagan 
emperor Titus, when a day transpired in 
which he had learned no knowledge or done 
no good, " I have lost a day." And 

" 'Tis a mournful story 
Thus in the ear of pensive eve to tell 
Of morning's firm resolves the vanish' d glory, 

Hope's honey left within the with'ring bell, 
And plants of mercy dead, that might have bloom' d 
so well." 

But it is a far more mournful story when the 



CONCLUSION. 123 

eve of life arrives, to be constrained to sigh, 
" I have lost a lifetime." " God gave me 
one lifetime, and it was once in my power to 
spend it as Aquila and Priscilla spent their's, 
as Paul spent his, as Phebe spent her's. But 
now, that only life is closing, and wo is me ! 
how have I bestowed it ? In making pin- 
cushions and playing the piano; in paying 
morning calls and evening visits." " And 
/.?— I have spent it in reading newspapers 
and novels, and dancing and singing songs, 
and telling diverting stories." " And / have 
spent it in drinking and smoking, in games 
of cards and billiards, in frequenting taverns 
and theatres, in reading coarse tales and books 
of blasphemy." Yes ; and though you should 
not need to look back on a life thus sinfully 
spent, it will be sad enough to review a life 
let idly slip. To think that by a right start- 
ing and a persevering continuance hi well- 
doing, it was once in your power to have 
proved the large and permanent benefactor 
of your generation — to think that had you 
only begun with the Lord and held on in 
fervour of spirit, you might by this time have 



124 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

finished works which would make many bless 
your memory, and planted seeds of which hun- 
dreds would reap the pleasant fruits when 
yourself were in the clay ; and then to remem- 
ber that once on a time you had it in contem- 
plation, it was all planned out and resolved 
upon and day-dreamed over and over, but 
never resolutely gone about — -how dreary it 
will make your death-bed, if capable of de- 
liberate reflection then ! How disconsolate it 
will render the retrospective evening of your 
days, should you reach old age ! And how 
different it will make your exit from his, 
who, looking back on his eventful career, 
could say, " I am now ready to be offered, 
and the time of my departure is at hand. I 
have fought a good fight, I have finished 
my course, I have kept the faith. Hence- 
forth there is laid up for me a crown of right- 
eousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, 
shall give me at that day." 

A life of Christian diligence is followed 
by an abundant entrance and a full reward. 
There are two principles deep-seated in our 
nature. Philosophy has got no name for 



CONCLUSION. 125 

them, but the Bible has an eye to each of 
them, and the gospel speaks to both of them. 
The possessions which we chiefly prize are 
either those which we have earned by our 
own industry, or gifts we have got from those 
we truly love. 

Perhaps there is some little slide in your 
desk, some secret drawer in your cabinet, 
which you do not often open ; — but when on 
a quiet holiday you pull it gently out and 
look leisurely at it, your eye fills with tears. 
You read the date on the faded book-marker 
with a pensive smile, or you press the little 
picture to your lips and drop upon your 
knees, to pray for him whose image that 
little picture is. But a hard-visaged stranger 
peering over your shoulder might marvel 
what all this emotion meant ; for he would not 
give even a few shillings for the whole collec- 
tion, and would think it more like the thing 
to be affected by the bunch of bank-notes and 
bills and government-securities in the adja- 
cent locker. 

And why do you prize it so ? That pic- 
ture was a keep-sake from your brother 
IP 



126 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

when he crossed the wide ocean ten sum* 
mers since ; — that broidered ribbon is the 
only relic of the sister's Jove, who made you 
many a like remembrance, but whose moul- 
dering fingers will make no more. Love 
lingers in these relics, and that is the reason 
why, when you stuff the bank-notes in your 
pocket, you clasp these trifles to your heart. 

Far more, if the gift or the bequest be one 
of vast intrinsic value. The estate, the house, 
the lands which a fatherly kinsman or a dear 
friend conveyed to you — you prize them infi- 
nitely more than if they had come to you in 
the course of nature or by the laws of ordinary 
succession. You delight to show people over 
these grounds, and when they ask how long 
they have been in your family, your voice 
falters when you tell how they came to be 
yours. Sometimes when you look over the 
pastures and corn-fields, the water trickles from 
your eye ; for you feel that you are looking not 
at vulgar roods and common enclosures, but 
are gazing on acres of affection, on an expanse 
of unaccountable kindness. You commemo- 
rate the unusual gift by the giver's name. By 
some adjective of gratitude you connect it 



CONCLUSION. 127 

with his dear memory; and much as you 
may value it for its intrinsic worth, it is more 
precious still for the beloved donor's sake. 

Then next to the possessions round which 
there hovers some symbol of living affection 
or departed kindness, we prize those posses- 
sions in which we recognise the fruits of our 
own diligence, the purchase of our own pains- 
taking. Next to the keepsakes of friend- 
ship, we delight in the rewards of personal 
industry. What a bright coin was that first 
dollar which your own diligence ever earned ! 
How solid and weighty did it feel ! How fair 
did the image and superscription shine on its 
fresh-minted face, and how endless did its 
capabilities appear ! Was there any thing 
which that wonderful coin could not accom- 
plish, any object of desire which it could not 
purchase ? And wherefore such overweening 
affection for that one piece, for had you not 
possessed from time to time pocket-money of 
your own before? Yes — but it came too 
easily ; it wanted the pleasant zest of indus- 
try ; it did not bring into your bosom, as this 
one does, a whole freight of happy recollec- 
tions, frugal hours, and self-denying labours, 



128 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

condensed into one solid equivalent, one tan- 
gible memento. 

What are the books in your library which 
you chiefly prize? Next to the gift-bible 
which solemnized the first birth-day when 
you could read it ; next to the book which 
your dying friend lifted from his pillow, and, 
with your name tremulously inscribed, handed 
you on your last visit, when he had strength 
to do it ; are they not the books which re- 
warded your blushing proficiency at the vil- 
lage school, or commemorated your nightly 
labours in the first and happiest years of col- 
lege life, or those which your long-hoarded 
savings first enabled you to purchase ? Why 
do you look with a kindlier eye on that juve- 
nile literature than on the long rows of glit- 
tering learning and august philosophy which 
fill your crowded shelves ? Why, but be- 
cause there is something of a pleasant per- 
sonal peculiar to them. The light of early 
days and industrious hours still floats around 
them. They are the sunny sepulchre in 
which much of your former self lies pleasantly 
embalmed, ready to start into a mellower life 
the moment memory bids it. 



CONCLUSION. 129 

Or why — to take the case already supposed, 
the opulent possessor of estates, which the 
love of another gave him — why is it that in 
the midst of luxuries and accommodations as 
abundant as wealth can purchase or inge- 
nuity suggest : why is it that fruit from trees 
of his own planting, or from a garden of his 
own tending, tastes so sweet ? Why is it that 
the rustic chair of his own contriving, or the 
telescope of his own constructing, so far sur- 
passes any which the craftsman can send 
him ? Why, the reason is, those apples have 
an aroma of industry, a smack of self-requit- 
ing diligence peculiar to themselves. That 
rustic seat is lined with self-complacent labour, 
and the pleasant consciousness of having made 
that telescope himself has so sharpened the 
maker's eye as greatly to augment its magni- 
fying power. God has so made the mind of 
man, that a peculiar deliciousness resides in 
the fruits of personal industry. 

I repeat, that the possessions which we 
chiefly prize — those of which the heart keeps 
the most tender yet tenacious hold — are not 
the windfalls of fortune, nor the heir-looms of 
regular succession, but the gifts of affection 



130 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

and the fruits of pains-taking ; those in which 
something of our-self, or a dearer than our- 
self, still lives, and speaks, and feels. 

Now in regard to the supreme possession, 
the inheritance of heaven, the God of Love 
has consulted both of those deep-seated prin- 
ciples of the human soul. The heaven itself, 
the passport through its gates, and the right 
to its joys are the purchase and the gift of 
another. Nor is it to the believer the least 
enhancing element in its priceless possession, 
that it is entirely the donation and bequest of 
his dearest friend. Looking forward to the 
pearly gates and golden streets of the celestial 
city, its love-built mansions and its life-water- 
ed paradise, the believer in Jesus delights to 
remember that they are purely the purchase, 
and as purely the gift of Immanuel. To think 
that he shall yet have his happy home on that 
Mount Zion; that with feet no longer sin- 
defiled he shall tread its radiant pavement 
and stand on its glassy sea ; that with fingers 
no longer awkward he shall tell the harps of 
heaven what once he was and who made him 
what he is ; that with a voice no longer 
trembling he shall transmit along: the echoes 



CONCLUSION. 131 

of eternity the song of Moses and the Lamb ; 
to think that his shall yet be a brow on which 
the drops of toil will never burst, and an eye 
which tears will never dim ; that he himself 
shall wear a form that years shall never bend, 
and a countenance which .grief can never 
mar; that his shall yet be a character on 
which the stains of time will leave no trace, 
and his a conscience pure enough to reflect 
the full image of him who sits upon the 
throne — the thought of all this is amazement, 
ecstasy. But there is one thought more 
which puts the crown upon this blessedness 
— the climax on this joy : 

" These glorious hopes we owe 
To Jesus' dying love." 

Heaven is doubly dear, as the heritage 
purchased for him by his divine Redeemer ; 
and all its glory is so heightened and so- 
lemnized, when he connects it with that 
adorable Friend who acquired it for him and 
conveys it to him, that though another heaven 
were in his offer, that other he would not ac- 
cept. That heaven to which Immanuel is the 
living way, — on whose earthward entrance 



132 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

atoning blood is sprinkled, on whose many- 
mansions and amaranth crowns are the sym- 
bols which connect them with Calvary, and 
amidst all whose countless joys, the river of 
deepest pleasure is the love of Jesus, — this is 
the only heaven to which the believer expects 
an entrance, and is the one of which his in- 
tensest longings say, "Would God that I 
were there !" 

But even in this purchased possession there 
are ingredients of delight of an origin more 
personal to the believer himself, — details of 
special blessedness, for the germ of which he 
must go back to his own earthly history ; and 
just as the sweetest surprisals here below 
are those in which some effort of benevolence, 
long by-gone, reverts upon you in its happy 
results — when you meet a stranger, and are 
charmed with his Christian intelligence and 
spiritual congeniality, and lo ! it turns out 
that his religious history dates from a casual 
conversation with yourself in the guest-cham- 
ber or the public conveyance ; or when you 
take refuge from the storm in a wayside cot- 
tage, and surveying with eager interest its 
arrangements of unwonted comfort and taste- 



CONCLUSION. 133 

fulness, or listening to the Bible lesson of its 
little children fresh from school, mysterious 
hints of some similar yet different scene steal 
in upon your memory, till you begin to think, 
" I have surely been here before ;" and anon 
the full truth flashes out ; you have been there 
before, when it was a very different scene— 
when a drunken husband and ragged children 
and broken furniture aroused your desponding 
commiseration ; but the tract which you that 
day left has introduced sobriety, and a Sab- 
bath, and a family Bible into that abject home, 
and made it what your grateful eyes now 
see ; — so the sweetest surprisals of eternity 
will be similar resurrections of the works of 
time. 

When the disciple has forgotten the labour 
of love, he will be reminded of it in the rich 
reward ; and though he never thought any 
more of the cup of cold water which he gave, 
or the word in season which he spake in 
Jesus' name — though he made no memoran- 
dum of the visits of mercy which he paid, or 
the asylums which he founded for the orphan 
and the outcast — it seems that they are regis- 
tered in the Book of Remembrance, and will all 
12 



134 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

be read by their happy author in the reviving 
light of glory.* 

To find the marvellous results which have 
accrued from feeble means — to encounter 
higher in salvation than yourself those of 
whose salvation you scarcely ever hoped to 
hear, and learn that an entreaty or prayer, or 
forgotten effort of your own had a divine 
bearing on the joyful consummation — to find 
the prosperous fruit already growing on the 
shores of eternity, from seeds which you 
scattered on the streams of time — with what 
discoveries of unexpected delight it will varie- 
gate the joys of the purchased possession, 
and with what accessions of adoration and 
praise it will augment the exceeding weight 
of glory ! Strive to obtain an abundant en- 
trance and a fulJ reward. Seek to be so 
useful that the world will miss you when 
away ; or whether this world miss you or not, 
that in a better world there may be many to 
welcome you as you enter it, and many to 
follow you when you have long been there. 
And above all, so live for Christ, so travail in 

* Dan. xii. 3. Matt. xxv. 34—40, Matt. x. 42. 



CONCLUSION. 135 

his service, that when you fall asleep, a voice 
may be heard from heaven, saying, " Blessed 
are the dead which die in the Lord : yea, 
saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their 
labours, and their works do follow them." 



THE END. 






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